by Peter Irvine
Ask several people to arrange Ireland’s political parties from left to right and they are unlikely to produce the same order. This is often treated as evidence that Irish politics is unusually confused. The greater confusion may lie in trying to force a multidimensional political culture onto a single line.
The left-right spectrum, whose terminology dates back to the French Revolution, is not entirely useless. It can describe disagreements over taxation, public ownership, welfare and the distribution of wealth. The problem begins when economic, social, cultural and constitutional questions are treated as though they must all point in the same ideological direction.
Fianna Fáil historically illustrates the difficulty. For much of the twentieth century, it was more economically interventionist and more closely associated with working- and lower-middle-class voters than Fine Gael. Its governments pursued protectionism, state-led development, public housing and an expansion of social provision. Yet Fianna Fáil was also closely identified with Catholic social teaching, rural Ireland and traditional attitudes towards family and morality.
Fine Gael, meanwhile, was generally more fiscally conservative and friendly towards business. From the Garret FitzGerald era onwards, however, it became increasingly associated with social liberalisation. Which party, then, was “left” and which was “right”?
Labour creates a different problem. It is conventionally described as a party of the centre-left and remains part of the European social-democratic tradition. Nevertheless, between 2011 and 2016 it governed the 26 Counties in coalition with Fine Gael while spending cuts, tax increases, water charges and other austerity measures were implemented.
One may argue that Labour moderated those measures, that it faced the constraints of the bailout or that coalition requires compromise. None of that changes the basic point that a party’s traditional label does not reliably predict every policy it will implement in office.
Aontú is perhaps the clearest contemporary example. On abortion, it is considerably more traditional than any other party represented in Leinster House. Yet much of its economic programme is interventionist. It advocates large-scale public housebuilding, stronger support for carers and families, regional investment and a more active state response to economic inequality. Describing Aontú simply as “right-wing” conceals as much as it reveals. Describing it simply as “left-wing” would be equally inadequate.
Similar complications appear throughout Irish nationalism and Republicanism. James Connolly was a revolutionary socialist. Éamon de Valera combined Republican rhetoric, economic intervention and social conservatism. Later Republican currents have contained Marxists, social democrats, cultural traditionalists and people whose politics cannot be fitted comfortably into any of those categories.
Republicans and those broadly sympathetic to Republican principles have differed substantially amongst themselves over the organisation of the economy and the moral character of society, even while agreeing on the prior question of national sovereignty.
The same is true, although expressed differently, within unionism. Working-class loyalism has sometimes supported extensive welfare provision and public spending while remaining socially conservative and constitutionally unionist. The Progressive Unionist Party, for example, explicitly describes itself as labour-orientated and has advocated policies grounded in a broad understanding of socialism.
The constitutional divide therefore cuts across economic and social divisions rather than reproducing them.
This matters when discussing the ending of partition and Irish national reconstruction. The debate is sometimes presented as though Irish unity and national freedom were inherently projects of the left, while maintenance of the Union belonged naturally to the right.
The national question concerns whether the sovereignty of the Irish people is to be exercised throughout the whole country. Its resolution would not settle every dispute over taxation, abortion, immigration, public ownership or cultural policy. Those questions would remain to be contested within a sovereign all-Ireland political system and the coalitions formed around them might look very different.
The falsehood is therefore not the existence of left and right altogether, but the belief that all political convictions can be compressed into one choice between them. Irish politics has always involved several overlapping arguments: class, nation, religion, culture, sovereignty and the role of the state.
We understand it better when we allow those arguments to remain distinct.
by Peter Irvine
Ask several people to arrange Ireland’s political parties from left to right and they are unlikely to produce the same order. This is often treated as evidence that Irish politics is unusually confused. The greater confusion may lie in trying to force a multidimensional political culture onto a single line.
The left-right spectrum, whose terminology dates back to the French Revolution, is not entirely useless. It can describe disagreements over taxation, public ownership, welfare and the distribution of wealth. The problem begins when economic, social, cultural and constitutional questions are treated as though they must all point in the same ideological direction.
Fianna Fáil historically illustrates the difficulty. For much of the twentieth century, it was more economically interventionist and more closely associated with working- and lower-middle-class voters than Fine Gael. Its governments pursued protectionism, state-led development, public housing and an expansion of social provision. Yet Fianna Fáil was also closely identified with Catholic social teaching, rural Ireland and traditional attitudes towards family and morality.
Fine Gael, meanwhile, was generally more fiscally conservative and friendly towards business. From the Garret FitzGerald era onwards, however, it became increasingly associated with social liberalisation. Which party, then, was “left” and which was “right”?
Labour creates a different problem. It is conventionally described as a party of the centre-left and remains part of the European social-democratic tradition. Nevertheless, between 2011 and 2016 it governed the 26 Counties in coalition with Fine Gael while spending cuts, tax increases, water charges and other austerity measures were implemented.
One may argue that Labour moderated those measures, that it faced the constraints of the bailout or that coalition requires compromise. None of that changes the basic point that a party’s traditional label does not reliably predict every policy it will implement in office.
Aontú is perhaps the clearest contemporary example. On abortion, it is considerably more traditional than any other party represented in Leinster House. Yet much of its economic programme is interventionist. It advocates large-scale public housebuilding, stronger support for carers and families, regional investment and a more active state response to economic inequality. Describing Aontú simply as “right-wing” conceals as much as it reveals. Describing it simply as “left-wing” would be equally inadequate.
Similar complications appear throughout Irish nationalism and Republicanism. James Connolly was a revolutionary socialist. Éamon de Valera combined Republican rhetoric, economic intervention and social conservatism. Later Republican currents have contained Marxists, social democrats, cultural traditionalists and people whose politics cannot be fitted comfortably into any of those categories.
Republicans and those broadly sympathetic to Republican principles have differed substantially amongst themselves over the organisation of the economy and the moral character of society, even while agreeing on the prior question of national sovereignty.
The same is true, although expressed differently, within unionism. Working-class loyalism has sometimes supported extensive welfare provision and public spending while remaining socially conservative and constitutionally unionist. The Progressive Unionist Party, for example, explicitly describes itself as labour-orientated and has advocated policies grounded in a broad understanding of socialism.
The constitutional divide therefore cuts across economic and social divisions rather than reproducing them.
This matters when discussing the ending of partition and Irish national reconstruction. The debate is sometimes presented as though Irish unity and national freedom were inherently projects of the left, while maintenance of the Union belonged naturally to the right.
The national question concerns whether the sovereignty of the Irish people is to be exercised throughout the whole country. Its resolution would not settle every dispute over taxation, abortion, immigration, public ownership or cultural policy. Those questions would remain to be contested within a sovereign all-Ireland political system and the coalitions formed around them might look very different.
The falsehood is therefore not the existence of left and right altogether, but the belief that all political convictions can be compressed into one choice between them. Irish politics has always involved several overlapping arguments: class, nation, religion, culture, sovereignty and the role of the state.
We understand it better when we allow those arguments to remain distinct.