The Labour Party’s obituary has been written at regular intervals since the foundation of the State but the party has always managed to defy the odds and survive in the most difficult circumstances.
Since the party’s dreadful showing in last May’s local and European elections the prophets of doom have been at it again but there is no disguising the scale of the current survival challenge.
The forthcoming election will be a do or die battle that will determine whether after more than a century of influence on Irish public life the party has a future as a significant political force.
Delegates attending the Labour Party conference in Killarney this weekend are under no illusions about the scale of the task they face. Back in the summer many of them were in the grip of despair when they contemplated the paltry 6 per cent share of the vote they won in the local elections.
Opinion polls in the following months showed the party’s vote dropping lower again and some of the older TDs recalled a remark by former leader Frank Cluskey during a similarly torrid period in the 1980s. After one dismal poll he quipped that the party’s poll rating so low it could actually be zero when the margin of error was taken into account.
For all that most Labour TDs have not thrown in the towel and some shoots of optimism have even begun to emerge in recent weeks as the economic recovery begins to manifest itself in improved after tax pay packets and unemployment continues to fall.
There is also a feeling that the behaviour hard left rivals, as evidenced in the insults hurled at President Higgins and the harassment of Irish Water workers, may prompt a rethink by some traditional supporters who have drifted away.
Labour TDs take some solace from the fact that down the years the party has been up against it at regular intervals but has always managed to cling on. A variety of left-wing factions and breakaway groups have threatened Labour at every election since James Larkin turned on his former comrades in 1927.
In subsequent decades parties such as Clann na Poblachta in 1948, the National Progressive Democrats in the 1950s and the Workers Party and Democratic Left in the 1980s all threatened to cut Labour’s ground from under it, but the party managed hang on and see off its rivals.
At the next election the challenge will be greater than ever before because not only will it come from the hard left Trotskyite factions, which have never been stronger, but from a far more dangerous foe, Sinn Féin, which has been consistently outpolling Labour by more than two to one for more than two years.
Labour’s dilemma is how to get across to voters its real achievement in office which has been to protect the most vulnerable in society from serious cuts at a time when the economy of the country came within an ace of imploding.
The natural instinct of governments when faced with that kind of financial bind is to cut back on welfare spending which inevitably rises significantly as people lose their jobs. This was one of the options urged on the Government by the troika but the Coalition and its Fianna Fáil-Green Party predecessor resisted the pressure.
A series of independent studies has shown that welfare recipients were better protected in Ireland than in any of the other EU countries hit hard by the financial crisis.
As well as that changes in the tax system during the crisis ensured that the burden of the massive adjustment fell on the highest income earners while the lowest remained almost completely outside the tax net.
Labour’s problem is that it is very difficult to get political kudos for stopping things from becoming far worse for the people it seeks to represent. Instead the temptation for the party was to become defensive for agreeing to the cuts that were actually implemented.
In recent months, though, Labour has become more aggressive in defending its record in government. In this newspaper during the week party TD Joanna Tuffy pointed out the falseness of the widely accepted proposition that the Coalition has presided over a dramatic increase in inequality.
“Ireland has the most progressive income tax and welfare system in Europe in terms of its impact on the distribution of income and it has been Government policy to retain this, even in the most difficult economic circumstances, and in the teeth of opposition by some who would happily see it dismantled,” she wrote.
She pointed to the work of two distinguished economists who made this point at a meeting of the Oireachtas social protection committee just a few weeks ago. Prof John FitzGerald of the ESRI provided detail of how Government policy on expenditure and taxation ensured a progressive redistribution from the best off to the least well off.
Dr Donal de Buitléir put it clearly: “The fact is that we have the most progressive tax and transfer system in the OECD both absolutely and proportionately.” In short, far from having anything to be ashamed of, Labour has a strong record in government of adhering to the party’s basic principles.
At the Fine Gael conference last weekend the supportive comments from Fine Gael Ministers made it clear that the two parties in government intend to fight the next election as a team.
Fine Gael transfers could provide a vital lifeline for Labour in a tight election but only if the party’s candidates are strong enough to stay in the race to benefit from them. That is why the willingness of all its members to engage opponents and defend the party’s record will be crucial if Labour is to convince the electorate that it deserves to survive.