The Night Of The Long Knives

Well, the election was every bit as dramatic as promised. The result was astonishing and unprecedented. An avalanche, an earthquake, a caldera, call it what you will: in terms of Irish political culture, the change effected is volcanic and tectonic in both scale and impact.

The big names in Fianna Fáil fell like nine-pins. Mary Coughlan. Mary Hanafin. Dick Roche. Conor Lenihan. As the count wore on, the body-count rose. It was bloody. It was merciless. Barry Andrews. Pat Carey. Sean Haughey. Martin Mansergh. John O’Donoghue. Mary O’Rourke. Frank Fahey.
For a period it seemed the number of elected Fianna Fáil TDs might not make it beyond the late mid-teens, but they eventually scraped enough seats from the bottom of the barrel to reach 20. It still amounted to a wipeout.
And the Greens, former Ministers all but one of them, were decimated to a man and woman: John Gormley, Eamon Ryan, Trevor Sargent, Ciaran Cuffe, Mary White, Paul Gogarty. No matter what happens in the future, nothing will ever be the same again.
All is changed utterly. Election 2011 delivered not just a new Government but a new alignment, a host of new faces and the apparent destruction of the dominant political force in this State over the last seventy years.
Take it out of that!
The outcome is already subject to multiple and contradictory interpretations. According to the Sunday Independent the electorate voted for change – by which, in the heel of the hunt they meant a Fine Gael government supported by high-minded independents, including one of their own, Shane Ross. Now, enraged by the coalition deal, they’re already excoriating the new coalition as a betrayal of… well, of their vision actually. It is an interesting outcome in itself and one that will be worth watching as it unfolds.
Two questions arise. First, what’s democracy? It’s hard for people who think they have all the answers to get their heads around it but certainly in the modern era, nobody gets exactly what they voted for. The way it works is the way it always worked: all the votes get counted and the composition of the new Dáil is the result. It’s an aggregate. That being so, it’s entirely plausible that the voters shied away from Fine Gael at the death precisely to avoid the prospect so beloved of the main media players.
Second, what’s change in this context? One well-known columnist linked with Democracy Now was overheard in Dublin South-East telling a local merchant that he had given his first preference to Paul Sommerville (pro-business Independent associated with Democracy Now) and his second preference to Sinn Féin – and that he hadn’t gone any further.
Well, that’s a vote for change all right, but not one that carries even the vaguest vestige of principle, policy or perspective. Those candidates are more or less at opposite ends of the spectrum. So for this fella, change means just a new crowd to replace the old crowd, a mere changing of the guard.
Another interpretation is that the electorate is increasingly volatile and likely to switch allegiances across a broad spectrum of parties – and on this occasion has coldly and brutally consigned Fianna Fáil to the margins of relevance. So, it’s a kind of X-Factor or Big Brother thing and FF were voted out to a chorus of hisses and jeers.
If true, that leaves open the prospect that Fianna Fáil can recover in the next series and some other party will be dumped in turn. That thought will sustain FFers through some long dark days ahead and will give hungry newshounds plenty of action.
But what if this analysis misses the point? What if this massive change has actually been coming for much longer and what we have witnessed is a rearrangement of the landscape rather than of the parliament? What if this rearrangement was on the cards a decade ago but was missed in the euphoria that attended the late years of the Celtic Tiger? (After all, we had a premonition in the 2009 Euro and local elections).
If the landscape itself has been rearranged, it’s not a political X-Factor we’re watching, a Fianna Fáil recovery is much less likely and the boomer-doomers of the the media are wrong – there’s change all right, but it’s in the deep muscle tissue of Irish society and politics. So let’s think about it...

ECONOMIC MESS
Major shifts have been happening way below the surface in Ireland for well over a decade now. Our rural past is well behind us: in 2011, the majority of the country is urban. What we make and do has changed more in the last fifteen years than in the previous 150. Technology has changed more in the last five years than in the previous fifty.
Among the electorate for the last election were people younger than the internet. We’re even more globalised than before. Increasingly, our media are internationally owned and we communicate and get our information in and from an astonishing range of sources…
While few voters would agree with Henry Ford’s dictum that ‘History is bunk’, most would hold that the Civil War was a very long time ago. The logic of two parties that are broadly the same in social and economic terms, but are separate because of events that took place three generations ago, makes no sense to them. That traditional and tribal division within Irish politics and Irish life no longer holds much water.
Viewed that way, it was, and is, historically inevitable that either the two Civil War parties would coalesce OR one of them would fade (or perhaps federate with Labour).
If, during the Great Madness, you’d bet on it being Fianna Fáil that would deflate so spectacularly, you’d have got good odds. For a long time it looked like they had the inside track and Fine Gael was destined for the sideline. But after it all went horribly wrong with the economy, the boot was on the other foot and it was the FF arse that was kicked: in effect, Fianna Fáil were bounced by a furious and vengeful electorate like no one could possibly have imagined five years previously.
Can they recover? They think so, but not everyone is convinced and for good reason. First there is the demoralisation of the troops on the ground to deal with. How many of them want to put in the hard labour when they were so spectacularly let down by the party big wigs? Then there is the crucial question: what exactly does the party represent? If anything? Taking the long view, we may have entered a new era in which our politics are increasingly free from the distortions of the Civil War.
Indeed, the election results profile an orthodox European political alignment with the Christian Democrats (aka Fine Gael) as the largest party and the Social Democrats (aka Labour) as the second largest. Quite like Germany, then…
In this light and bearing the numbers in mind, what we have before us now is a Grand Coalition of right and left of centre parties, a kind of National Government, something many campaigned for over the past eighteen months.
Of course, that may be good for managing our way out of the economic mess – or not as the case may be: the cliff face that has to be climbed is steep and treacherous. But it actually might not be the best for our political life because it opens both Government parties to attack from either flank and offers the prospect that, when the next election comes, Labour will be hammered and instead of a rational politics of ideas, we’ll be back with the oul tribal and parochial nonsense and with another high decibel X-Factor election.
We’ll see.

HARDCORE NATIONALIST
As well as jettisoning huge numbers of the old Government, this election has introduced new textures and flavours in the United Left Alliance and a range of independents, some of whom seem bewilderingly interested in actually representing their electorate and working hard on national issues. Whatever next?! But with strong, thoughtful people like Luke Flanagan, Mick Wallace, Claire Daly, Richard Boyd Barrett and Shane Ross in the mix, Dáil Éireann won’t lack for life, that’s for sure!
And then, of course, there’s Sinn Féin. Interestingly, I suspect that it would be wrong to see them as the party next to Labour’s left. If rhetoric were reality, that’s where they’d be but, as their time in Government in Northern Ireland has shown, they do cuts too. And they’re on a long march. The way they now adapt to the realities they encounter would be as foreign to their predecessors as it is anathema to their dissident outriders.
But leftist rhetoric at election time in working-class constituencies notwithstanding, there is considerable evidence that a significant number of Sinn Féin supporters are essentially of the right. I have written at length about the racism, sectarianism and fascism that are on show where Celtic matches are being watched – and there is a huge crossover here with the more hardcore nationalist, and usually Catholic element in the Sinn Féin mix.
Remember the lessons of history: economic catastrophes have always proved fertile grounds for falangist or national socialist parties, who blend a kind of anti-big shot quasi-leftism and populism – a point not lost on the Socialist Party and the United Left Alliance, who have coolly resisted nonsensical invitations from journalists to unite with the Shinners in a single hard left party. They have their suspicions of the rawer underbelly of Sinn Féin support.
So far, Sinn Féin have been able to ride the rage and they have done it adroitly. Right now they expect to be making hay in the new Dáil and doubtless they will, for a time at least because they have good, articulate speakers in their ranks, who are deeply committed to using the Dáil as a platform for their policies. They will liven up the debate considerably. In fact, in terms of the idea of service, the Sinn Féin elected representatives could show many of those in the main parties a thing or two. But someday, and maybe soon, they’ll have to start dealing with their paradoxes. They come with baggage and lots of it.

CULTURAL AGENDA
The Dáil will be a far livelier place for as long as this Government lasts. That much we can say for certain. And, given the extent of its majority, there is little reason to imagine that it will not run its full course. But the possible entertainment value of this new all-singing all-slagging show apart, what matters most, of course, are the policies that will be implemented.
The faces at the top table may have changed but the challenges haven’t. The banks and the bailout are still there. Issues of taxation and the creation of employment must preoccupy the new regime. The health sector is still like a mini-Angola. The crisis in Libya reminds us of how exposed we are to fuel woes. Things are unlikely to get easier...
Although Fine Gael and Labour have established common ground, tensions will be there from the off and not just on the economy. There’s a raft of potential legislation and indeed constitutional change that will test their common purpose with a vengeance, including the Children’s referendum, lowering the age of legal sex to fit with what actually happens and what the majority wants, legislation for abortion and gay marriage, and so on.
In the first year of this Government, as well as all that, there’ll be visits from Queen Elizabeth and perhaps President Obama. Emigration may reach a tipping point.
In its lifetime there will be political reform, public service reform, centenary commemorations for the 1913 Lockout (now that’ll test their unity!), the start of World War 1, preparations for the 1916 centenary commemoration (while under fire from Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin), increased tensions in the Middle East, massive floods here, there, wherever and droughts everywhere else, famines perhaps, increasing migration from east and south of Europe and from North Africa, food riots …
Along with all of that, the new Government will have to contend with unrealistic hopes and expectations, while also raising and maintaining morale…
Maybe the most difficult task of all will be to change the political culture. I’m not talking about cronyism and corruption. I’m talking about the notion that we all believe basically the same things and it’s a matter of choosing the best manager(s).
There’s a once-off chance now, to capitalise on the the new European-style aggregation of the Dáil, to bring the political culture into line with where we are as a society, to jettison the idea that it’s one team’s turn and then another’s when they all play essentially the same game. So, one of the key tasks of the Government will be to bring the social and cultural agenda properly back into politics, alongside the economic concerns that have dominated for far too long (and which nonetheless, our swashbuckling proponents of the free market got entirely wrong). The challenge is to bring ideas back into politics.

ENORMOUS DISRESPECT
In this regard there is less of a mountain to climb now than might have been the case a decade ago. The elements are all there. It is the Government’s duty to do this and with Labour involved there is a greater likelihood of it happening than was the case with the benighted PDs involved. But the pressure has to come from the people too. The economy is important. But work and culture and education and empowerment are also essential ingredients in creating a society that cares effectively for its citizens.
There will be a lot of noise in background and foreground alike. Much of this static derives from celebrity commentators voicing what they were hired to voice: the interests of powerful people, few of whom, as it happens, reside in this country.
This much is clear. In the immediate aftermath of the formation of the new Government, many of these commentators have been showing enormous disrespect to the citizens’ choice and therefore to the building blocks of the Republic. They use the word democracy but show little comprehension of its meaning. Contempt for the citizens is a hallmark of autocracy, as it is also of fascism.
This is still a democracy and responsibility still resides with the citizens. They have spoken. Now what we need is a show of genuine leadership. A number of well-worn aphorisms summarise the difference between a boss (autocracy) and a leader (democracy): ‘A boss relies on authority, a leader relies on co-operation’… ‘A boss creates fear, a leader creates confidence’… ‘A boss creates resentment, a leader breeds enthusiasm’… ‘A boss fixes blame, a leader fixes problems’…
You earn respect by giving respect and being worthy of respect; you earn trust by giving trust and being trustworthy. If these values can be allowed to infuse every interaction, you have the basis for a new Republic. Humility helps. The great Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh is revered in his country – he cemented his bond with the people by continuing to live in a simple worker’s hut even when president.
If the new Government keeps the citizens with them in the fightback, we will all work our way out of the catastrophic economic morass they inherited. In wishing them well, one is also wishing us well. It’s not about what they do anymore. It’s about what we all do… together.