The Left in Eire

...However, after a short government of only seven months and two elections in the same period few will want to face yet another election for a while...

...Up until the very morning of the day the Dail met the results was far from certain, however...

...PEADAR KIRBY (Peadar Kirby, a previous contributor, is an Irish journalist who lives in Dublin...

...FitzGerald in public popularity by more than twenty percentage points...

...Though Fianna Fail had gained 81 seats as compared to the 78 gained by the outgoing coalition of Fine Gael and Labor in the 166-seat Dail, the block of five socialist members were thought to lean to Dr...

...Haughey became Taoiseach in 1979 to some 3,700 million when he left it last June-and the country's budget delayed for two months because of the election, the incoming government will have to be seen to be more interested in solving these problems than in securing itself in office...

...At an estimated cost of 80 million Irish pounds (about $ 120 million) it is the most expensive deal ever made in the history of the state to buy votes...

...Where Mr...

...FitzGerald's controversial "constitutional crusade" never became an issue in the election and it certainly cannot be said to have told against him in the results, confirming that there is no popular will any more to defend the old "Catholic" nationalist shibboleths...

...Report from Ireland THE LEFT IN EIRE SOCIALIST BALANCE OF POWER BY the time the Dail (the Irish Parliament) met on March 9 to elect a new government for the Republic after the inconclusive results of the mid-February general elections had allowed both sides to exude the confidence of victors, the election of Charles Haughey as Taoiseach (Prime Minister) and his Fianna Fail party was a virtual certainty...

...O'Malley, seeing he had lost support, withdrew his name at the beginning of the meeting...

...With inflation at 23 percent, unemployment at its highest ever with some 145,000 or about 11 percent of the workforce out of work, an enormous balance of payments deficit-the country's foreign debt has risen from around 1,000 million pounds when Mr...

...In excluding some respected members of the camp opposed to him within Fianna Fail from his new cabinet, most notably the exclusion of his challenger for the leadership in 1979, George Colley, who was deputy leader of the party, Mr...

...Interestingly also, Dr...

...In an effort to secure just one of those votes and thus make his victory certain Mr...

...But deals there were as Mr...

...It is not unimportant that some of those in the North who expressed sadness at Dr...

...Part of an answer may lie in the increasing support for overtly left-wing candidates...

...For the small Labor Party, which had been in coalition with Fine Gael and which had fought the election on the basis of continuing that arrangement, it was their decision by a narrow margin in the early hours of the morning the day the Dail reconvened to vote for Dr...

...Haughey's new government will last its full five-year term...

...Apart from economic issues, where a return to Mr...

...Their three votes, together with those of the two independents, the socialist Tony Gregory and the nationalist Neil Blaney, gave Mr...

...Prior, whose efforts to out-maneuver the more extreme Loyalists such as Dr...

...The unashamed effort to buy votes indulged in also by Dr...

...The poor vote received by candidates of Provisional Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Provisional IRA, who stood in the election for the first time since the 1950s, also confirmed that the traditional nationalist issues are of little interest any longer...

...What is certain is that there remain many within his parliamentary party and a few even in his cabinet who are only waiting for the day when they can do so with success...

...FitzGerald but not to continue in coalition which brought angry public exchanges between different factions in the party's leadership...

...FitzGerald's going were moderate Unionists...

...Haughey trailing Dr...

...The waning of the traditional ideology which has dominated the southern state since independence raises the question about what may replace it...

...They had been very encouraged by his courageous insistence that the South would have to change those elements in its laws and ethos which made it objectionable to Northern Protestants, notably some elements derived from Catholic teaching such as its prohibition on divorce and its claim on the territory of the North...

...Sinn Fein, The Workers' Party, a break-away group from the more traditional nationalist Provisional Sinn Fein in 1969 and who have consolidated their identity as a serious socialist party, added two more seats to the first one it received in last June's election...

...It is a development that is long overdue for the hundreds of thousands of poor and marginalized in Irish society...

...As one Senator, Professor John A. Murphy of University College, Cork, commented:"There is an element of farce in the sight of a millionaire island-owner seeking to woo a representative of the poorest people in Dublin.'' The farce was compounded by the fact that the surprise support for Mr...

...Haughey lavished his attention on the young socialist elected to represent the deprived inner city of Dublin for the first time, Mr...

...Haughey has concentrated his undoubted talents since becoming leader of Fianna Fail much more than on the former...

...The day of Fianna Fail's first post-election parliamentary party meeting began with a senior member of the party, Des O'Malley, declaring he would oppose Haughey for the leadership, thus confirming rumors that he had the support of a majority in the parliamentary party...

...And with issues of unemployment, of taxing speculators' and banks' profits, of redistributing income, of economic planning and controlling our own natural resources being voiced in parliament in a forceful and insistent way for the first time, a new socialist perspective is being introduced into Irish public life...

...However, what deals were made to win back some of those to support Mr...

...Haughey seems to have learned little in the way of magnanimity for the sake of the party's or, more importantly, the country's good...

...One of the few certainties of this election for the future, therefore, is that the traditional stability of Irish politics, where either Fianna Fail or a coalition of Fine Gael, Labor, and small parties formed majority governments, looks as if it is well and truly over...

...FitzGerald and with his tenacious staying-power demonstrated so dramatically since the election, few will seek to oust him from the leadership of Fianna Fail without being sure of their support...

...FitzGerald also had good relations with the British Secretary for the North, Mr...

...This conciliatory stress on wooing the Northern Protestants he coupled with a more open approach towards the process of Anglo-Irish talks initiated by Mr...

...Being dependent on at least one of these socialist votes in the Dail makes it unlikely that Mr...

...Haughey in the unlikely role of a defender of the "Catholic" nationalism of the Southern state, staunchly defending its Catholic ethos and refusing to accept that there exist any elements of sectarianism in its laws...

...FitzGerald will be sorely missed...

...The general election of February 1982 may in future years well be seen to mark a watershed in the development of Irish politics...

...Haughey's record of reckless spending is nervously feared, the change of government will be most notable for its effect on relations between the Republic and the Northern Unionists (Protestants...

...Change in these areas Dr...

...In the event about the only drama surrounding the occasion was when the three members of the left-wing Sinn Fein, The Workers' Party got locked out of the House for the crucial vote and had to enter by bursting into the press gallery and clambering over the party from the French Embassy in the Distinguished Visitors' Gallery...

...It is, however, on the latter that Mr...

...His policy is much more one of seeking an overall solution to the North in the context of talks with London, taking little or no account of the highly volatile feelings of the Northern Protestants, who by and large fear him and view him as a fellow-traveler of the Provisional IRA...

...Fitzgerald preferred the open approach and he published details of this cooperation thus showing just how non-contentious were the issues involved...

...Haughey, however, prefers to place himself in the traditional nationalist tradition and speaks about the fact that the Northern state has not worked and that no solution is possible within it...

...Haughey a comfortable margin of 86 votes to the outgoing Taoiseach, Dr...

...O'Malley's announcement and the meeting itself will never be known...

...FitzGerald's government), a new development in Irish politics, makes them even more prominent nationally and is a serious worry to the traditional parties...

...Haughey had preferred to keep the details of these secret, thus allowing the impression to be created that he was negotiating some deal with the British government over the North, which predictably alarmed Northern Unionists, Dr...

...Three new socialist candidates were elected in this election, all of them grassroots activists who have steadily built up their local support through their work among the unemployed and marginalized...

...However, the high vote received by candidates who were prisoners in Northern prisons when they were put up in the general election in the South last June, evaporated totally in this recent election, thus confirming the lack of any real interest in the Northern issue down here...

...Haughey in the twelve hours which elapsed between Mr...

...Tony Gregory, and won his vote with a detailed package of house-building, schools and industry for the area as well as the cancellation of a pet Fianna Fail project of a major highway...

...The only exception to this is at times of extreme tension in the North, as during the hunger strikes last year...

...For his courage in giving a rare burst of leadership in the Republic, Dr...

...It has even brought calls for a revision of our constituencies boundaries so as to make them smaller in order to ensure more stable majority governments, a polite way of trying to ensure the exclusion of the socialists...

...FitzGerald made his single most important goal, launching last September what he called a "constitutional crusade" in a famous radio interview during which he referred to the Republic as a "sectarian state...

...Garret FitzGerald's 79...

...Haughey and the cooperation on areas such as economic exchanges and tourism which resulted from these...

...FitzGerald, who promised to change elements of the budget which had brought down his government in January, was only one element in the drama of those two-and-a-half weeks of "kingmaking...

...He articulated openly what many young people have been feeling for years as their allegiance to Catholicism weakens and they seek a more liberal secular state less dominated by the church...

...Ian Paisley and to set up a new elected convention in Belfast in which moderate elements could dominate, were helped by the former Taoiseach's approach...

...Haughey from Sinn Fein, The Workers' Party made the deal unnecessary...

...After so much high drama, Irish politics must now settle down to tackling the country's acute problems...

...FitzGerald and with their support he could have formed the government...

...More important by far, however, were the divisions which rent Fianna Fail within a week of the election results in the unprecedented challenge to Mr...

...For they also saw both Fianna Fail and Labor tearing themselves apart with internal divisions coming out into the open with a bitterness rarely seen in Irish politics...

...Haughey's leadership mounted by a group who have made little secret of their disaffection with that leadership, a mood strengthened by the opinion polls throughout the election which showed Mr...

...Such a perspective casts Mr...

...That these socialists hold the balance of power in this Dail as they did in the last (it was the vote of one Socialist Independent which brought down Dr...

...Haughey will probably last longer than Dr...