Our hopeless Left (and Centre and Right)

July-August 

ILLAGE IS unashamedly Leftist. Its agenda is

equality of outcome, sustainability and account-

ability. These are all driven by the overarching

goal of treating people as equals.

The right labours freedom to the detriment of equal-

ity, tending to ﬁxate on the provision of choices rather

than on how in practice those choices are exercised.

The non-ideological, non-visionary parties of the

pragmatic centre hold little appeal for

Village

Depressingly, with a signal in June that it wants to go

into coalition with Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael, Sinn Féin

has signalled its immediate destination is that prag-

matic centre.

For fourteen years

Village

has tried to champion

parties taking egalitarian stances but it’s been

difﬁcult.

Our left has been – and let’s be blunt –

remains

disaster, a let-down. That is not an accident. For his-

torical reasons most Irish people, though they have

a weakness for leftist rhetoric, are conservative and

property-fetishising with a limited sense of the

common good. Many are viscerally hostile to an

agenda of treating people equally.

It is almost of the essence, of course, of the current

government and its supporters that property rights

are sacred. That is why it will never get to grips with

the homelessness crisis: its respect is already tied up

with those who have a home. A variation on this men-

tality accounts for its reluctance to challenge our

over-priced professions.

The Independent Alliance is utterly incoherent of

policy and membership embracing the apparently dis-

affected from the likes of ex-stockbroker Shane Ross

to turfcutter Michael Fitzmaurice. Its agenda was

always going to unravel.

The Fine Gael-Independent coalition is supported

on a ‘conﬁdence-and-supply’ basis by Fianna Fáil.

Fianna Fáil is tainted by its reckless past and the

incoherence of its platform. It believes serving the

people and business in equal measure is viable. It has

learnt little beyond the need to regulate the banks

and, under impressive Micheál Martin to eschew hoo

rism of all colours.

Labour never does what its manifestos promise.

Because of the elasticity of its conscience Labour has

long attracted the wrong type of representatives.

Sinn Féin is evolving, and not overall in a good way.

Village

has taken a coherent stance on post-Troubles

Sinn Féin, making pessimistic predictions based on

the nuances of its politics over the last twenty years.

Those predictions are now vindicated. Its commitment

to a Left agenda has never been convincing bearing

in mind its deﬁning preference for irredentist nation-

alism over ideology and its governing strategy in the

North. Its performance at local-authority level is not

impressive or particularly leftist. It is cultist, ambiva-

lent about democracy and transparency, and in thrall

to the Nor thern Army Council. As recently as late June,

Mary Lou McDonald was saying she believed Gerry

Adams that he was never in the IRA.

With shiny, tough-minded new leaders it could do

so much better. But it has not avoided the traditional

hurtle to hunger for power over principle that charac-

terises the evolution of nearly all our par ties. It is now

on an uninteresting path to become Fianna Fáil in

twenty years

Village

has a weakness for the Social Democrats,

whose mild platform is essentially the same as

Labour’s, but its progress is depressingly slow and it

should never have allowed the clever but right of

centre and pro-business, Stephen Donnelly to become

one of its three leaders. It needs to develop ﬁre, shini-

ness and some new personalities.

The radical Left – Solidarity and People before

Prof it – of fer the huge appeal of integrity and seri

ousness, and some zealous personalities, but its

opposition to property taxes is inexcusable, and

its focus on opposition to water taxes rather than

a broader anti-inequality platform, including oppo

sition to the iniquities of NAMA, corruption and

the resurrection of the developer classes has sold

its revolutionary ideology short. It has blown the

opportunities of the Economic Crisis and seems

destined to remain peripheral. Tragically it has not

digested this. No amount of campaigning can dis-

guise its distance from power.

The Green Party’s policies are of ten radical, and

its agenda mature, but it is not hard-minded and

it achieved so little in the last government that it

is difﬁcult to be enthusiastic. Its message needs to

be presented in new ways and it needs new faces.

A coalition of the parties of the left, radical left

and the Greens would, as always, best promote

Vil-

lage’s

agenda, if no doubt imperfectly.

With Sinn Féin’s ﬂight to the respectable centre

or worse, and the sidelining of Solidarity and

People before Profit, Ireland seems doomed to

another generation of time-serving centrist gov-

ernment boosting the economy but doing little for

society, community, the environment or equality

of life. It has rarely seemed so unlikely. The vista

is bleak.

EDITORIAL

Issue 66

July-August 2018

Chllenging he endemiclly

complcen nd ohers by

he cue promoion of

equliy, susinbiliy nd

ccounbiliy

ONLINE

www.villgemgzine.ie

@VillgeMgIRE

EDITOR

Michel Smih

edior@villgemgzine.ie

ADVERTISING

sles@villge.ie

PRINTERS

Boylns, Droghed,

Co Louh

VILLAGE IS PUBLISHED BY:

Ormond Quy Publishing

 Ormond Quy Upper,

Dublin 

Our hopeless Left

(and Centre and Right)

What is needed is foundation of a new party of the conventional

Left: modern, common-good-embracing, quality-of-life-

monitoring, taxing, planning, developing, accounting, envisioning

July-August 

Villge Mgzine subscribes o he Press

Council code of conduc. Complins bou

he conen of he mgzine my be mde o:

Ofﬁce of he Press Ombudsmn,

 Weslnd Squre, Perse Sree, Dublin 

CONTENTS

NEWS

POLITICS

EDITORIAL

 Our hopeless Left

(nd other politicl prties)

 Villger,  news miscellny

 Shocking llegions in suppressed

Miskelly ﬁle on NAMA’s Projec Egle

Frnk Connolly

 Jo Jo Dullrd dispernce in limbo,

 yers on

Cirion Kirby

 New Drew: Grd Commissioner

Hrris

Frnk Connolly

 Who orgnised he Bloody Sundy

msscre?

Emonn McCnn

 Did grdí rge Biley o shield

Sophie’s killer?

Gemm O’Dohery

 We re ll in he guer bu some of

us re looking  ﬁve srs: inerview

wih Ilin MEP Elenor Evi

Roslyn Fuller

 Celebring Anhony Coughln

Review by Desmond Fennell



The Secre Brriser

Reviewed by

Dvid Lngwllner

 Kincor’s smoking guns

Joseph de

Búrca

OPINION

 The cse for Universl Bsic Income

Pul O’Brien

 Sree women

Mrinne Lecch

MEDIA

 The nswer is Bicoin: Mx Keiser

inerview

Michel Smih

 Csing he Pod more widely

Gerrd

Cunninghm

 Vogue, commercilism or relism?:

Film Irelnd becomes Screen Irelnd

Tony Trcy

CULTURE

 Aldbrough House: demoliion of

Irelnd’s oldes here; nd monser

exensions

Michel Smih

 Wh re you wiing for, Zhudun?

Shne Fizgerld

ENVIRONMENT

 Irelnd’s oil nd gs indusry: no new

licences now

Sinéd Mercier

 Equivocl Evelyn: Me Eirenn no s

pessimisic on clime chnge s

siser Me orgnisions

John

Gibbons

 The bes frui doesn’ rv el

George

Monbio

INTERNATIONAL

 The DUP skeleons in Theres My’s

close

Joseph de Búrc

 Tlk Turkey, Russi nd humn righs

Semus Mrin

 My  Pnonyng Dys

Peer

Emerson

 Trump, mking Chin gre gin

Joseph de Búrc

 Villge Idio July-Augus: Boris

Johnson