More moves in the left

I saw this article today in the Fingal Independent about how the Socialist Party (SP) have gone in to coalition in Fingal County Council (FCC) with the Labour Party (Lab). Given the history of the SP (they grew from a split in the Labour party between Trotskyist and 'mainstream' factions) I was a little surprised to read of this coalition. Many people doubted whether the left could ever work together, is this the start of increased co-operation? It's quite interesting to contrast this SP/Lab coalition on Fingal County Council with the Fine Gael/Lab coalition in Dublin City Council.

Also, in the same issue of the Fingal Independent, I saw that Fine Gael councillors tried to block Joe Higgins MEP from speaking at the first meeting of the new FCC (see article here) as he is now both a County Councillor and MEP, and has two mandates. Let us not forget that the man was a TD and effectively the leader of the SP. Joe Higgins replied to the criticism by saying that the Fine Gael councillors; 'should have taken their Milk of Magnesia' before attending the meeting.

Now that's why Joe got my vote.

Interview with People Before Profit Councillor Joan Collins

Today I spoke with Councillor Joan Collins of People Before Profit who represents the Crumlin/Kimmage ward of Dublin City Council (DCC). Councillor Collins is a well known opponent of the bin tax, high-rise apartment blocks (and abuse of rezoning schemes in DCC) and the cutbacks to Our Lady’s Children’s Hospital in Crumlin (Crumlin Hospital). A councillor since 2004, Councillor Collins works in An Post and has been active in the trade union movement all her life.

NF: A lot of smaller leftist parties and left-leaning independents were elected in the last local elections. Do you think this is the start of a change in Irish politics, a protest vote or a combination of the two?

JC: I’d say it was a mixture of both. I think there is a change in the way people are thinking, obviously because of what has happened over the last year, the impact the cuts are having on people, how quickly they’ve come and how the government has been in the process.

Everyone knew what was happening a few years ago. Developers knew. People on the street knew what was happening because of all the apartments sitting empty. I remember people telling me “ah there’s an apartment building there; fifty apartments and not a person in one.” People knew that there was a downturn coming and the goverment tried to pretend it wasn’t happening.

We went into an official recession last November, so people would’ve seen it developing over a period of time. I think people are very very angry about the inaction of the government and the attack on ordinary peeople that was the last budget. The people that caused this are getting away with it; they’re the ones that are sitting pretty on their big pensions while we’re getting pension levies and cutbacks in our hospitals and communities.

People are seeing people like myself, activists who have been around a long time, as people who’ll kick Fianna Fáil out.


Do you predict a growth for People Before Profit in the future? Will you build on your five seats in DCC and challenge for a Dáil seat?

Yeah we got five council seats across Dublin which was a huge breakthrough as this was the first election we really campiagned as an organised force.

At People Before Profit we want to develop the movement now. I think People Before Profit is a good, catchy idea- it’s putting people before the greed, cronyism and profiteering we’ve had for years in this country.

We are in talks with the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group, who have fourteen councillors across Tipperary and fourty-three percent of the vote, and they’ve been around for a long time. They also had a Dáil seat but lost it in the last General Election, like Joe Higgins did. We’re looking at linking up with them, and we’ve also been talking to people like Declan Bree in Sligo and Catherine Connolly in Galway, who’d be ex-Labour. Chris O’Leary in Cork who left the Green Party over their policies in government would be another one we’re talking to.

We’re looking at broadening it out now, we’ll be tallking to Joe Higgins and the Socialist Party because there’s a real need now for an alternative. To me Labour and Fine Gael aren’t real opposition. You could see that in Dublin where the working class didn’t really vote for Fine Gael, they know that they’re only a mirror image of Fianna Fáil.

Labour don’t seem to really have in them to go out into communities and get people organised. They talk the talk, but they don’t walk the walk. When they were out canvassing for the local elections they were all talking about going it on their own, now they’re going in with Fine Gael on the DCC. People voted for real change, not the same old crap they;re giving us on that council. They’ve linked up with Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, Sinn Fein and all for chairmans seats on the Special Policy Committees.

There’s definitely a need for a group like the People Before Profit Alliance, and I think we will grow. We’re really calling on people like Joe Higgins to organise and build a new Workers’ movement, and hopefully then we can work with him.

You’re very much a campaigner on issues like the bin tax and the cutbacks to Crumlin hospital. How important is it for a successful election campaign to be centred on issues like these?

Well it’s really part of the process. Following on from what I was saying earlier about Labour talking the talk but not walking the walk; well people like myself, Brid Smith and Richard Boyd-Barrett are actually out in the communities organising people to stop bad things happening and to push good things happening. We successfully stopped the sale of ten percent of Pearse Park to a private developer and we also stopped the building of the high-rise apartments there. We stopped the rezoning of the park, and now we’re trying to work with the clubs there to have them go to the council and say “this is about what we want, not what you want.”

I remember a while ago the council commissioned an architect to draw up a plan for Crumlin Village. There was a meeting called, and a lot of people were excited as they went down to it. All it was was five-storey developments from one end of the village to the other. He was asked did he ever put his foot inside Crumlin, did he know the history of Crumlin, and he said he never had set foot in Crumlin, didn’t know a thing about it. That was DCC sending a green light out to developers, saying that this is the sort of thing they’ll accept.

We also stopped that horrible development at the Ashleaf Shopping Centre, and An Bord Pleanala went on and castigated DCC for ever allowing it. You’d nearly wonder where the permission for the developments is coming from.

From there I talked to people in the area and set up the Dublin 12 Development Action Group, which a sort of an umbrella group for community activists which educates people about development law and planning law.

Campaigning on issues is really crucial to politics. It’s crucial for people to see that you’re there and you’re not just around at election time.

I recently saw your statement where you spoke out against the agreement in DCC where Fine Gael and Labour effectively decide mayoral and committee positions amongst themselves. What alternative agreement would you prefer?

Well I would have preferred if Labour had come out with a set of principles for the council and for the community. People like ourselves would then support them, we could be like a block against Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

What has been done in other areas, such as in Tipperary, is that the positions are rotated frequently so that each group in the council has a chance to advocate their own ideas. This year Fine Gael and Labour have said to the Tipperary Workers and Unemployed Action Group that they wouldn’t be supporting the policy of rotation anymore.

Ideally we’d have a directly elected Lord Mayor, which is an idea I’d fully support. I know Gormley has said that we’d have that system in place now, but unfortunately I can’t see that happening now.

I’d say what Minister Gormley was originally thinking was that he’s get a Green Lord Mayor of Dublin, but that’s not going to happen now.

So ideally the position of mayor and the other position would be either elected or rotated, so that there’s no alliances made and that it’s independent of the City Manager.

On Monday Emer Costello effectively got in by default. Mannix Flynn had said he’d run against Kevin Humphreys for Deputy Lord Mayor. We’d been told by two independents that they’d vote for Costello because she was in their constituency, but when it came to it they voted for Kevin Humphreys for Deputy aswell. They’d obviously both made a deal beforehand that they’d both vote for Labour.

Women are drastically under-represented in Irish politics. You were the only female candidate in the Crumlin/Kimmage constituency for the local elections, and you are now the only female councillor. How can women increase their representation in Irish politics?

It is a tough question to answer because without the social backup a lot of women you can’t access politics. I work in An Post and for years I was involved in unions all my life. What I always noticed was women were involved in their union at a young age, dropped away from the union as their family responsibilities grew and the came back into it as they grew older.

Unless radical things like workplace childcare start to happen it will be difficult to change.

For working-class women it’s even tougher. Politics takes money, and a lot of women just don’t have that money. However on our Area Committee (in DCC) now, there are six women and five men. But I would question what type of women and men we have in there. Ultimately it does come down to class politics. There’s very few working-class women in politics, but I think it something that you’d have to address over a period of time. Stopping globalisation and crony capitalism with democratic socialism is a way forward.

Many women, due to family and work commitments, just don’t have the time to get involved. By the time they get home from work they’re making dinner and putting the kids to bed, they just don’t have the time.

Do you think there is a mentality of “women never get elected, so what hope do I have?” among women?

I think so, women are sort of put into boxes in that way. The good thing is that women now are much more outgoing than they ever were when I was starting out, when we were all definitely put in a box. Hopefully seeing women like myself get elected will boost womens’ confidence that they can get elected.


Many thanks to Joan Collins for her time and patience

Interview with Labour Councillor Eric Byrne

I chatted recently to Councillor Eric Byrne of the Labour Party, who was returned in the Crumlin/Kimmage ward this month. Cllr. Byrne was first elected to Dublin City Council (DCC) in 1985, and was a member of Dáil Eireann from 1989-1992 and 1994-1997. Cllr Byrne is a member of of the Dublin 12 Drugs Task Force and Ballyfermot Local Area Partnership board, and helped to found the Fatima Mansions and Dolphin House Task Forces. Cllr.Byrne has kept a blog (here) since 2006, and also has a website at www.ericbyrne.ie. I was luckily able to ask Cllr. Byrne a few questions about his campaign, his use of social media and the Labour Party.

NF:What were the issues brought up the most on the doorsteps during you campaigning?

EB:Well the main issues brought up on the doorsteps were national issues. People generally only wanted to talk about national issues. Public Servants wanted to talk about the Pension Levy, the Elderly wanted to talk about the abolition of the Christmas bonus, and people only brought up topics and subjects that were national. Nobody really wanted to know about local issues like “will you fix that footpath”.

Let me explain my modus operandi when canvassing. Name Recognition is strong for me among people who have been living in the area for a few years, so the real challenge for me would be getting people who have recently moved into the area to vote for me. For new arrivals I’d invariably say; “There’s more to me than knocking on your door. Will you have a look at my website?” I’d have all my policies and updates on each local area on my website, so it’s really an easier way to communicate with people who wouldn’t speak to you on the doorstep.

Do you think your election, and the success of Labour nationally, was a reaction to the unpopularity of the government? Was it a protest vote?

There’s no doubt that there was a substantial element of protest in the vote. However there was clearly an element of people who had voted for Fianna Fáil moving away from the party. The protest vote mainly went to independents and smaller parties like (People Before Profit Councillor) Joan Collins. The Labour Party profited mainly from the ‘political protest’ voters who had moved away from the government, rather than the protest voters who were voting in protest against the political establishment.

How much of your success do you attribute to the current popularity of your party?

Well let me say that I would attribute most of my success to twenty-five years of hard political slogging. I would attribute the increase in my vote to the popularity of the Labour Party, and indeed the popularity of our leader of Eamon Gilmore.

Let me give you an example. Five years ago I got twenty percent of the first preference vote in this constituency. This year I got twenty-five percent of the first preference vote. Together with my running mate Henry Upton, Labour got nearly fifty percent of the vote in the constituency. It’s the increase that I would attribute to the current popularity of the Labour Party.

What do you make of the thirty-year electoral pact (as it is referred to by The Irish Times) in the Dublin mayoral elections between Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour? Although it gives Labour the chance to have mayors like the recently elected Emer Costello, does it not undermine the poltical independence of the party in Dublin City Council?

I think local government is very different to national government. You rely even more on the support of other parties. It is unheard of in DCC that any party would have an overall majority.

Therefore you need the support of other parties. There are fifty-two seats, so you would need twenty-seven to have a majority. Labour have nineteen councillors on DCC so we must look around and see who we can do business with. In our case we did business with everybody.

Although we were the best represented party on DCC this year (ahead of Fianna Gael with 16 seats), there was an agreement to distribute positions on DCC across all the parties. For example on the six strategic policy committees, there are three Labour representatives, one Fianna Fáil, one Fine Gael and one Sinn Fein.

All parties represented on DCC are represented with at least one official position, except the five independents. Majority rule in politics is the reality of democracy.

We need stability in this current economic climate, and by working together, Labour, Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, Sinn Fein and the independents are giving this stability to DCC.

How important a role do you think local politics can play in the coming years?

Well I’m twenty-four years on DCC, and I have to say the discussions Labour held with the other parties were some of the most fascinating I’ve ever taken part in because they all wanted to discuss policy.

There are now six Strategic Policy Committees, each has a manager who sits monthly on the Corporate Policy Committee. This is effectively the ‘cabinet’ of DCC, and they shape policy.

For the first time now you’ll see DCC run around policy issues as opposed to gimmicky local issues.

DCC is trying to spread the word that Dublin will be the engine of growth in this country. You hear Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael sort of downplay Dublin’s importance and go on about rural areas, but I believe that Dublin can and will be the engine of growth for Ireland in the next few years.

We’ll be trying to market Dublin as an ‘open city’ in the next few years. This will include working with the Gay community and other groups to make our city as vibrant as possible. This in turn will increase tourism and commerce.

You were one of the pioneers in terms of Irish politicians keeping blogs. Do you see online social networking playing a larger role in future elections?

Well one only has to look at what’s happening now out in Iran. Social Networking and blogging are playing a bigger role. It’s well known that the media and journalists are looking at blogs and social networks to get information from the source.

I’m bringing the local issues to the people by putting up blogs and photos on my website. My website has a section for each area of my constituency, so people can see directly the local issues I’ve been working on in their area. People are always trying to catch up with what I’m doing, and the website lets them.

There is a generational conflict now between the more traditional older politicians, who are struggling to adapt and use new social networking and blogging tools, and the new younger generation of politicians, who are very web-savvy.

Many thanks to Councillor Eric Byrne for his time and patience.

Victory for Byrne, Collins, Upton and McGinley in Crumlin-Kimmage

Councillor Eric Byrne of the Labour party has come in at number one in the Crumlin-Kimmage ward of Dublin City Council. Mr Byrne and fellow Labour candidate Henry Upton emerged with 39.7% of the first preference vote in Crumlin-Kimmage.

People Before Profit candidate Joan Collins (formerly Independent) came in with the second highest first preference vote, elected with 17.4%- compare this to her taking of 4.6% of the first preference in the 2007 general election. The supporters of Ms Collins broke into song (singing “the people, united, will never be divided”) as she was elected at around 8pm today.

The final seat was hotly contested between Ruairi McGinley (Fine Gael), Ray McHugh (Sinn Fein) and Charlie Ardagh (Fianna Fail). McGinley had 13.1% of the first preference vote, McHugh had 8.7% and Ardagh had 13.2%. After Ray McHugh was eliminated, only 6 votes separated McGinley and Ardagh at one stage; however the Fine Gael candidate eventually won out in the end.

Of the other candidates running in the consituency; Tony McDermott of the Green Party had 6.9% of the first preference (McDermott got 5.8% of the first preference in General Election 2007), and Ray Kelly of the Christian Solidarity Party got 1%.

The ‘swing to the left’; a protest vote or a genuine shift?

The nationwide ‘swing to the left’ was mirrored in the Crumlin-Kimmage ward, and indeed all over Dublin today.

At the time of writing, Cllr Eric Byrne (Labour) was topping the poll, with the second Labour candidate Henry Upton (nephew of Mary Upton TD and son of the late Pat Upton TD) also polling strongly. People Before Profit (PBP) candidate Cllr Joan Collins, who stood as an independent anti-bin tax candidate in the last local elections and general elections, also looks set to take a council seat. The last seat looks set to be taken by Fine Gael’s Ruari McGinley of Fianna Fail’s Charlie Ardagh, after The Tallaght Echo reported that Sinn Fein’s Ray McHugh “looks crestfallen as he appears to have lost his seat” (via Twitter at 1.12pm). I must congratulate The Tallaght Echo on their regular twitter updates from the National Basketball Arena. The updates direct from the count gave voters a view they would not otherwise have got.

Further south, PBP’s Boyd Barrett is topping the polls in Dun Laoghaire (after he narrowly missed out in the last general election) and Hugh Lewis (also PBP) is also looking good for a seat in Ballybrack. Brid Smith (PBP) took 81% of the first preference vote in Ballyfermot, ahead of former Lord Mayor of Dublin Vincent Jackson.

Mick Murphy of the Socialist Party looks set to retain his seat in Tallaght Central, as does party colleague Ruth Coppinger in Mulhuddart. Former Socialist TD Joe Higgins is polling very strongly across Dublin in the race for the third MEP seat. Mr Higgins took 27% of the first preference vote in Fingal and according to Newstalk was topping the polls this morning across Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown.

The question that the Socialist Party and People Before Profit (as well as Workers’ Party and other leftist parties) must now consider is this; Is this ‘shift’ in voting patterns from the centre to the left as a result of a genuine dissatisfaction with the staid civil war politics of Ireland or is it as a result of a ‘protest vote’ (a kind of ‘anybody but Fianna Fail’ vote)?

Of course, the rise of the smaller leftist party can be directly put alongside the demise of the Green Party, who look set to lose out on a massive scale in Dublin.

"Is your Mam in son?"

A few days ago, a representative for a Sinn Féin candidate for the local elections in my area knocked on my door. As I answered the door, I prepared for the usual “I’ll make your voice heard” shtick which I should’ve heard. When the man saw me, he smiled and asked “Is your Mam in son?” I replied that I am a registered voter, and have been since last summer, to which the man replied “Oh right” and proceeded to simply utter “you wouldn’t consider giving [the Sinn Féin candidate] one of your preferences next week, would you?”

This is not the first time this has happened. Consistently Fine Gael, Fianna Fail and other parties have sent people to my door whose first words are “Is your Mam/Dad in?”

Yet for a party whose support is higher in the 18-25 age bracket than any other age group (according to the Irish Times/TNSmrbi poll published on Friday), the disregard that Sinn Féin showed me set me aback a bit. I am a year shy of my twentieth birthday, and by all acounts I do not look under eighteen. The Sinn Féin canvasser assumed that I was younger than eighteen. Would it not be more helpful for a seemingly progressive, “trendy” party to assume that a young person is of legal voting age until told otherwise? Isolating young people in such a manner only exacerbates the perceived apathy towards politics among people my age .

Sinn Féin and the other established political parties should recognise the considerable support the 18-25 year olds give the party by adopting a positive approach to young voters.