Almost a century ago, the self-declared conservative rebels who founded this State chose to imitate the British constitutional monarchy, replacing a figurehead monarch with a figurehead president. When Irish voters went to the polls last week, the question they were actually asked was: who would you like as our substitute king or queen?
The Irish president is without any political power and constrained by the Constitution. The question I would have liked to ask people is: does this system work for you? For many working-class people, the answer is no. This is obvious from the large vote for Catherine Connolly and the number of spoiled votes.
This election has sent a message to the Government. Both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have come out of the campaign with egg on their faces. Fine Gael’s candidate was unable to enthuse even their own voters, while the Fianna Fáil fiasco surrounding Jim Gavin has led to the first real threat of Micheál Martin – a near-unshakeable political operator – being dethroned.
Many on the broad left now see the Connolly campaign as the starting point for left unity. However, a call for left unity on the basis of a political alliance has the potential to weaken rather than strengthen the working class. We absolutely need unity in action, on the streets, in campaigns and to support striking workers like the school secretaries and caretakers. We need the trade union movement to step up to the plate and mobilise working-class people against the housing and cost-of-living crises.
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Unity in action tests the leaders of all the parliamentary left parties. But political alliances generally favour the bigger parties, as indicated by recent polls. Sinn Féin and the Social Democrats benefited from the Connolly campaign, despite all the work radical left groups may have put in.
Political alliances don’t provide clarity for working-class people. Instead of clearly defining the substantial differences between different left parties, it muddies the waters and allows parties who ultimately do not represent the working class to put on a left mask.
Both the Labour Party and the Green Party have shown in practice that they don’t represent the working class. The Labour Party implemented vicious austerity that crushed working-class communities when they were in coalition with Fine Gael. The Green Party are neoliberals on bikes – they had no problem overseeing the devastating housing crisis or putting regressive carbon taxes on hard-pressed workers whose energy bills are already through the roof.
The Social Democrats are just “Labour Light”, without the baggage of having been in government. But their record in councils is not much different. In South Dublin, for example, they have been staunch defenders of increasing the Local Property Tax, an unfair tax on the homes of working people.
In reality, electoral left unity means a Sinn Féin government. As a socialist, I see the possibility of a Sinn Féin government as a positive step forward and an opportunity to break the century-long stranglehold of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. But we also have a duty to warn workers that Sinn Féin are unlikely to deliver the fundamental change we so desperately need in Ireland.
The experience of Sinn Féin in government in Northern Ireland, and in ruling groups on councils in the Republic, paints a very different picture than their rhetoric. They have implemented Tory austerity in the North and delivered little when in charge of councils in places like South Dublin. Pearse Doherty explicitly told investors in 2024 that “Sinn Féin are pro-business”. Davy Stockbrokers said Sinn Féin were more “New Labour than Corbyn” and that the rich could sleep easy in their beds at the prospect of a Sinn Féin-led government.
It’s not clear if Sinn Féin have ruled out going in with Fianna Fáil after the next election. They will say they can be both pro-worker and pro-business, but the reality is that a Sinn Féin government, willing to co-operate with a capitalist system, would have to drop their promises to workers. Massive pressure from below would be required to counter the pressure from the bosses.
If we had a Red TD after the next general election, we would facilitate the formation of a Sinn Féin government by voting for Mary Lou McDonald for taoiseach, but externally. We would support that government from the opposition benches to hold it to account. We are not interested in ministerial “Mercs and perks” and would not join a coalition government to help administer a State and economic system that we want to dismantle.
Supporting a government from the opposition benches would mean voting for or against government legislation, motions and budgets on a case-by-case basis. This would always be based on what is in the interest of working-class people and with the understanding that movements like the water charges campaign achieve more than a Labour Party minister ever could.
Political alliances, just like government coalitions, will always favour the larger parties and are the ruin of the smaller parties. A socialist TD who joined a government alongside Labour and the Greens would be outvoted, suffocated and ultimately compromised.
The Catherine Connolly campaign shows that the opportunity to remove Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael from power is within reach in the coming years. But what it’s replaced with matters. For us, a different Ireland will come about only when workers are in the driving seat of a socialist economy where workers decide how to run society ourselves.
This will not be delivered from on high by the system, even when run by Sinn Féin, Labour, the Soc Dems or the Greens. We have to fight for it. A left government that compromises with the system will lead to massive demoralisation – and the result would be the return of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael or something far worse.
Madeleine Johansson is a socialist councillor for the Red Network, which describes itself as a revolutionary socialist organisation of working class activists, on South Dublin County Council representing the Palmerstown-Fonthill LEA
