Rejecting a Labour pre-election pact with Fine Gael is not about being "pro-Fianna Fáil", writes Derek McDowell
I remember the moment well. I had been elected to the Dáil for the first time just 10 days earlier. A few pints in town to celebrate when suddenly I saw Dick Spring on the television. He was on the steps of the Shelbourne Hotel where he had just met John Bruton, then leader of Fine Gael. Bruton wasn't in the picture. In fact Bruton had just been written out of the picture.
At that moment, watching and listening to Dick on television I was more than a little scared of where it might all lead. But I was also exhilarated. Exhilarated and, dare I say it, proud. Proud of Dick, proud of the party. Proud that at last we had a leader who was putting Labour centre stage. Proud of a leader who put our values, our politics, our voters first. Proud of a leader who really meant it when he said that we were there to set the agenda and not just to make up the numbers for Fine Gael.
Of course, December 1992 was a long time coming. In point of fact, Labour settled the coalition question in 1981. Party conference that year saw a gargantuan battle between forces of the so-called left, many of whom were opposed to the whole idea of coalition with any party of the right and the supporters of Michael O'Leary who wanted a pre-election deal with Fine Gael.
Neither side won as the party voted for the compromise proposed by Frank Cluskey, which was that Labour would fight the election as an independent party and decide whether to enter government when the people had had their say.
Now, in 2005, for the first time in a quarter of a century the party is being asked to reject the Cluskey paradigm. We are being asked to hitch ourselves to the Fine Gael wagon fully two years out from a general election.
For many in Labour this is a matter of tactics. Those who argue for a deal with Fine Gael will say that support for both parties can be maximised by a pre-election arrangement. Those who oppose it will say that any arrangement will gift several existing Labour seats to Fine Gael and several potential Labour seats to others on the left.
Those who favour the Fine Gael deal say that Labour will benefit from the existence of a clear alternative to Fianna Fáil: those who oppose the deal say that Labour will lose out in such a scenario as the media focuses on Enda Kenny and Bertie Ahern to the exclusion of our leader and message.
Personally, I believe the tactical case against a pact is persuasive but in reality the debate is about much more than that. We are asking important questions of ourselves, questions that will resonate for a long time to come.
Let me put my cards on the table.
I believe in an independent Labour Party. I believe that our first task is to set out policies that will place us firmly in the leadership of all left-wing and progressive forces in Ireland. I believe that the cause of social democracy demands that we look to unite all who share our values under our banner, or at the very least inside our tent.
I know many Greens who passionately believe that their's is a unique message and I respect that view. Personally, I have never met a single member of the Green Party who could not be accommodated in the Labour Party.
I believe that Sinn Féin is wrong on the national question. I believe their links to crime, violence and sectarianism make them untouchable, at least for the moment. That said, I can find nothing in their economic or social policy with which I disagree fundamentally. Equally, it is true that many of those who have recently joined Sinn Féin in the Republic might well have found a comfortable home in Labour.
What does this mean in practice? It means that Labour must define itself unapologetically as a party of the left. We should seek to make electoral arrangements with parties of the left as to maximise representation of the left in the Dáil. We cannot do this while entering an electoral pact with one of the parties of the right.
Of course, the proponents of the Fine Gael deal will say that such a formulation leaves us open to the possibility of coalition with Fianna Fáil. This, they say, makes people like me "pro-Fianna Fáil".
Needless to say, this is rubbish. Our approach is policy-centred. Those of us who favour the independent approach are in favour of precisely that - independence. We are not pro-FF but neither are we pro-FG.
But we are also in favour of participation in government. The splendid isolation of principled opposition offers nothing to our voters and us, as the tragedy of the last eight years so powerfully attests. Labour should participate in government with any other party that will do Labour's business.
It is hardly a radical proposition. Surely this is precisely what any serious political party would seek to do? Certainly all the other parties think so. Mary Harney, Trevor Sargent and Gerry Adams have, all of them, made it clear that each of their parties will stand before the electorate as independent parties and work with the mandate they get thereafter. Labour alone, it seems, wants to argue the case why the leader of another party should be taoiseach.
Those who argue for a deal with FG claim that the independent strategy that Labour adopted in 2002 didn't work. Surely the argument made by the current editor of this newspaper a few days after the 2002 election is more cogent? On that occasion Ms Kennedy wrote: "Wouldn't the Labour leader, Ruairí Quinn, have been mad to attach his star to Fine Gael? He didn't have a good election but it could have been far worse."
In essence, the question that we in the Labour Party must ask ourselves in Tralee at the end of the month is this: is it enough to define ourselves as an independent party of the left espousing the values of social democracy or must we also define ourselves as being "anti-Fianna Fáil"? If we do the latter, surely we are saying, in effect, that the limit of our ambition is to be the social democratic wing of Fine Gael? Surely, that can't be enough?
Derek McDowell is a Labour senator and former TD for Dublin North Central.