Madam, - I first worked on a general election campaign in 1973. I have worked for the Labour Party on every one since then - nothing important, just knocking on doors, dropping leaflets, putting posters on lamp posts.
I took no interest in policy detail, believing it to be something that would be negotiated if and when the party was in a position to go into government, but I believed politics offered some possibility of doing something on issues I cared about: some measure of secularisation of Irish society; some redress in the balance of power between worker and employer; some measure of redistribution of wealth in a society where poverty was deep-rooted and endemic.
I did this every few years, thinking that if you expressed strong sentiments about what was happening in Ireland, then at election time you should do something about it, however minor. I even watched, open-mouthed, as Ruairi Quinn delivered a pre-election budget so tight-fisted that it said, in no uncertain terms, to his own electorate that if they thought they were going to get something from a Labour minister for finance they could think again. Then I went out and worked on the subsequent election.
I have now watched for 10 years as Ireland has transformed itself and Labour has sat on its hands refusing to take any part. It now looks as if that is set to continue for another five years. I don't quite know why this is; perhaps the party leadership think that anything so vulgar as the actual exercise of power is beneath their elevated sensibilities; perhaps, deep down, they actually believe the right is better at doing these things.
Either way, I have come to the conclusion that the Labour Party, as presently constituted, represents the single biggest block to progressive politics in Ireland, mopping up votes and then neutralising them. There are two options. Either the party must be destroyed, removing it from the way of social reform, or the party must be reformed. If the latter, then reform can only start with the removal of the present leadership; that is the only way a new beginning can be made. - Yours, etc,
EOIN DILLON, Ceannt Fort, Mount Brown, Dublin 8.