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Showing posts with label Fianna Fail. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fianna Fail. Show all posts
Irish Times ✒ One of the big lessons of recent history is that SF devours those who do business with it. 

Stephen Collins

The declaration by more than half of Fianna Fáil’s TDs that they are willing to consider coalition with Sinn Féin after the next election represents a serious loss of nerve that has profound long-term implications for the party and for Irish politics.

The only conclusion that can be taken from the response of Fianna Fáil TDs to questions from The Irish Times is that they have lost confidence in the current political strategy of Taoiseach Micheál Martin. Since becoming leader of Fianna Fáil in 2011, Martin has based his entire approach on rejecting the aggressive nationalism of Sinn Féin and seeking to purse a policy based on the concept of a shared island. That is in stark contrast to the drive for a Border poll and a united Ireland being pursued by Sinn Féin.

It now appears that a majority of his TDs do not share Martin’s vision for the island’s future and have no problem with Mary Lou McDonald’s demand for a Border poll at the earliest opportunity.  

Continue reading @ Irish Times.

Fianna Fáil Would Regret Sharing Power With Sinn Féin

Matt Treacy ✒ On Friday last, January 29, the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair (CDC) for Fianna Fáil in East Meath, held a special meeting at which it decided to suspend the Public Relations Officer, John Kierans for stating that he had put a motion down for the next ordinary meeting of the CDC regarding the Covid panic.


According to the report in Drogheda Life:

The first motion before the CDC reads as follows: “That the Fianna Fáil Louth Coastal Meath CDC acknowledges that data from the Central Statistics Office of Ireland pertaining to excess mortality does not support the contention that Ireland suffered from an abnormal pandemic in the year 2020. Furthermore, we acknowledge that excess mortality data from ‘anti-lockdown Sweden’ indicates that Sweden did not have an abnormal pandemic in 2020. The pandemics endured by both countries was similar to the recent bad flu seasons”. 

 

Photo Credit: Drogheda Life
That would seem to be pretty normal practice in most political parties. Members table motions and they are voted upon and then sent forward to party HQ, possibly for inclusion on the Clár of an Ard Fheis or annual conference.

The Officer Board, presumably other than Mr. Kierans, decided that this is not actually how things work:

Mr. Kierans’ statement was not issued with the approval of the Fianna Fáil CDC and the motions referred to in it are not on the Fianna Fáil CDC agenda. They are not representative of the views of the CDC or Fianna Fáil party policy generally.
The Fianna Fáil CDC does not share and, moreover, rejects any assertion that the Covid-19 pandemic is no worse than a bad flu season.

Which seems to defeat the entire purpose of having meetings to decide policy, if policy is already set in stone. Translated from bureaucratic speak, what it means is that the motion is not on the agenda because the majority of the officer board decided that it ought not to be even discussed. How does any party know whether the views are or are not “representative” unless they are voted upon by the members?

Their statement concluded with an instruction to the public to observe all the restrictions in place. A somewhat strange way to conduct internal party business, but we live in the strangest of strange times.

So what had John Kierans said that was so offensive to those who decided to “no platform” him, as their fellow arbiters of public debate among the other establishment parties might frame it?

Well, he suggested that the cure as it were, is worse than the virus, and that the government ought to seek the views of those “epidemiologists and virologists” who demure from the position that lockdowns are the way to go. These views may be heretical and are seldom aired here since main stream media closed them down, but they are not uncommon within the scientific community, and are in fact considered by other states in tackling Covid.

Obviously Mr. Kierans did believe that the motion would be allowed, and indeed that it would be on the agenda for the next meeting of the CDC. Apart from that, it would seem that his reference to CSO statistics on mortality rates and his comparison of these to the experience of Sweden is beyond the bounds of what can be properly debated here. Not only within the media but even at a meeting of members of a political party.

The newspaper report on the motion proves that Kierans had put considerable effort into framing his motion, and supported it with statistics and graphics to back his contention. Far too much information obviously for some.

Hopefully, Mr. Kierans will have sufficient appreciation of irony when he reads back over the following part of his motion which caused him to be suspended as PRO for the Soldiers of Destiny.

Under Micheál Martin’s leadership Fianna Fáil remains undaunted in its commitment to open discussions and policy formation from its membership.
"Covid hysteria is crushing medical services for many seriously sick people, destroying family businesses, and tearing at the very fabric of our society" Kierans says.
We in Fianna Fáil can lead our country out of this morass. Cheerleading the latest lockdown measures and fretting over statistics, (that are literally meaningless), is not good enough. Fianna Fáil and Ireland is smarter than that.

 

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

Fianna Fáil PRO Suspended For Having Opinion On Covid

Tommy McKearney ✈ Admittedly we can only ever be certain of death and taxes. With that caution in mind, though, it’s safe to say there is abundant evidence that the once all-powerful Fianna Fáil is sitting on the edge of a political precipice.

 
Over the past decade, its share of the vote at general elections has been approximately half what it received for the previous seventy years, with its seats in Leinster House reduced accordingly. No less alarming for party supporters have been recent opinion polls. Admittedly only reflecting a sample of the electorate’s view on a particular day, this showed an unmistakable downward trend. Old Dev’s creation is in deep trouble, and the Establishment’s power-brokers know it.

In the three months since forming a government, Fianna Fáil has presided over confusion, fiasco, scandal, and ineptitude. The list of political setbacks is lengthy. The forced resignation of a minister within days of the new Dáil sitting, losing another minister by way of the golf dinner scandal shortly thereafter and the appointment of highly paid advisers on the same day as reducing pandemic unemployment payments are only the more spectacular of many faux pas.

Confused messaging has been a continuing feature of the Mícheál Martin leadership, a problem exacerbated by the constant and apparently deliberate undermining of his position by the Fine Gael tánaiste, Leo Varadkar—a situation underlining the weakness of a party that is now in the invidious position of carrying responsibility but with reduced authority.

Adding to his woes, the taoiseach has powerful critics within his own party. In spite of Mary Lou McDonald’s verbal attacks on Martin’s performance, she has been outdone in that field by certain Fianna Fáil TDs. Marc MacSharry and Jim O’Callaghan are just two of several critics. Most outspoken, however, has been the Galway West TD Éamon Ó Cuív, grandson of the party’s founder, who has bluntly called for his leader’s replacement. He has repeatedly warned that after the next general election only two large parties will remain: Fine Gael and Sinn Féin.

Such undisguised discontent has fuelled a view that the present leader bears sole responsibility for the party’s plight. Though he has certainly contributed to its distress, the malaise goes much deeper than one individual. Fianna Fáil has been in difficulty for several decades, with its failings disguised by a cunning ability to retain office through finding willing coalition partners.

At the heart of its difficulty is a problem of identity, coupled with a lack of clarity of purpose. Sustained for decades by its ability to dispense favours rather than presenting, or representing, an ideology, Fianna Fáil is now paying the price for its duplicity. Once it was seen as offering some degree of opposition to the strident laissez-faire policies of Fine Gael. With a Labour Party wedded to a policy of coalition with the Blueshirts, Fianna Fáil was able to gain significant working-class support.

Such illusions have been shattered over the past decades with a series of devastating disclosures, with Charvet shirts in the diplomatic bag, brown envelopes in the Dáil and untruthful accounts of “personal dig-outs” among the more spectacular. Any lingering illusions were finally laid to rest during the years of “confidence and supply” while supporting the Blueshirts in their pursuit of the harshest of neo-liberal strategies.

Torn between protecting the business interests of its wealthy backers and taking the decisive measures necessary to guarantee the health and safety of working people, Mícheál Martin knew, for once, exactly where he stood.

Within five days of assuming the leadership of the Government in June, his minister for health, Simon Donnelly, oversaw the reprivatisation of hospitals taken into state control at the outset of the covid pandemic. Add to this the inexcusable failure to deal with the threat to workers in food-processing plants, the failure to address the injustice done to Debenham’s former staff, and the state’s refusal to treat covid-19 as an occupational hazard—all clearly indicating that the party’s commitment to the free market remains as firm as when it oversaw the fiasco leading to the 2010 bail-out, which cost working people so dearly.

Elsewhere, the supposedly anti-Treaty, republican party has struggled with its foundation myth. Its commitment to maintaining the 26-County state, with its institutional gravy train, has required it to endeavour to retain partition at all costs. Few episodes illustrate this better than the aftermath of Varadkar’s identification of the “changing tectonic plates” in the Six Counties last December. Rather than recognise reality, the mealy-mouthed Martin hurried to Belfast to publicly reassure unionism that the republican party harboured no desire to end partition.

Hardly surprising, therefore, that Sinn Féin has found itself well placed to supplant Fianna Fáil. With a Labour Party that has spent so long in bed with Fine Gael and is now led by a TD who tried to bulldoze through the water-tax legislation, the social-democratic slot is vacant. Not surprisingly, therefore, Mary Lou McDonald and colleagues are able to use that card to good effect. Moreover, with its repeated calls for a border poll, Sinn Féin can now lay claim to the republican role once played by Fianna Fáil.

That the prospect of Sinn Féin displacing Fianna Fáil is now a distinct possibility has been recognised by the power-brokers of the Establishment, and they are reacting. After decades of outright hostility, the Sunday Independent recently devoted two pages to an interview with McDonald. Last month Joe Duffy spoke to her on RTE about “The Meaning of Life,” and—perhaps most surprising of all—a retired colonel raised the possibility of a Sinn Féin minister for defence for the 26 Counties some time in the near future.*

There is about all this, nevertheless, the impression of a “Come into my parlour, said the spider to the fly” strategy. The party can become acceptable to the Establishment, but at a price.

Whether it will pay that price is a matter for its members. For the left, there is the need to recognise the emerging situation and, no matter what changes take place, that we keep our eye firmly on the goal of an independent and sovereign workers’ republic.
Referenced

*Thejournal.ie, “Retired Colonel Dorcha Lee: Is a Sinn Féin minister for defence really that unthinkable?” Thejournal.ie, 13 September 2020.



Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

A Changing Of The Guard?

If Fianna Fail wins Westminster MPs in Northern Ireland, why do we need an Irish Republic? That’s the key argument which controversial commentator Dr John Coulter address in his Fearless Flying column today. 

Soldiers Of Nationalist Destiny

Just because the DUP is the largest Unionist party doesn’t mean the myth of Unionist unity has become a practical reality. Commentator Dr John Coulter uses his Fearless Flying Column to maintain that Fianna Fail contesting polls in Northern Ireland is precisely the shock treatment Unionism needs to bring about genuine unity. 

Fianna Fail’s Northern Invasion Will Save Unionism

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