‘Labour’s going soft on drugs!’ ‘Labour to expel trade unions!’ ‘Labour says, yeah, what the hell, we just might join up with Fine Gael again.’ Would you want Eamon Gilmore’s job? The coverage following the Labour Party conference was one more example of the media determining what the news is and then covering the very news they determine. While Labour might be feeling a bit hard done by, the real victim is intelligent political analysis which is so lacking in large parts of the mainstream media.
It started on RTE’s Week in Politics – or rather it started it up where it left off during the election debate. Think what you will about the Mullingar Accord, Pat Rabbitte could not have made it clearer – Labour was committed to Fine Gael come hell and high water. He did and said everything to make clear that commitment – joint policy documents, joint media presentations, joint everything. If anyone was in any doubt about Labour’s commitment, it had nothing to do with Labour’s conduct.
That didn’t stop the media hounding the Labour leader at every turn – ‘will you go in with Fianna Fail?’, ‘are you ruling out Fianna Fail’. Of course, the media never hounded the Greens who actually did prove to be truly equivocal about which coalition they joined. It never asked Enda Kenny if he would join with Fianna Fail if the Dail was so fragmented that it would have been the only viable government. It didn’t ask Bertie Ahern if he’d accept Fine Gael in such circumstances. No, just Labour. [Note: ‘media’ is short-hand for that section that attempts to short-cut thinking – not all journalists and media outlets are culprits).
So Mr. Gilmore’s in the job only a wet day and Sean O’Rourke starts in – will Labour go into an alliance at the next election, will Labour rule out alliances and deals and pacts. Mr. Gilmore made it clear even before he became Labour leader: ‘There will be no alliances’ and a number of other clear and concise variations on that theme.
Still, the Irish Times ran the following headline: ‘Labour leaves open option of future election pact.’ He didn’t but that shouldn’t get in the way of the media’s determination that he did. Of course, the Examiner did report Mr. Gilmore correctly:
‘Mr Gilmore also firmed up his stance on electoral pacts, ruling out any formal accord with Fine Gael or others.’
Or take ‘trade union links’. Willie Penrose TD made a stir venting his frustration at the lack of support coming from trade unionists. Of course, this is nothing new. Trade unionists – like the working class, like the middle class, like the young, like women, like farmers, like the retired – have never voted Labour in great numbers. The overwhelming number of all these people (called the electorate) historically vote Fianna Fail. Of course, the intrepid journalists covering the event worked this mole-hill into the ground and missed, if not mountains, then at least hillier terrain.
Mr. Penrose demanded that trade unions:
‘ . . . forget about being palsy walsy with Bertie Ahern, forget about the china, about Farmleigh and Merrion Square.’
Wouldn’t it have been more provocative to ask: is Labour suggesting that trade unions shouldn’t enter negotiation for a successor deal to Towards 2016? Is Labour proposing that trade unions should abandon social partnership? These are as logical follow-ups as the suggestion that Mr. Penrose was proposing a break with trade unions.
Or why didn’t the journalists put this into a larger context? Like the fact that Mr. Penrose stated:
‘We’re asking for the trade unions to come back to their natural home.’
That doesn’t sound like Labour is ready to loosen trade union ties. Or the fact that a motion calling for the party to ditch ‘democratic socialism’ for ‘social democracy’ – which was seen by delegates as a Trojan horse for all manner of transformations, including disaffiliation – was roundly defeated.
Or the fact that the motion to establish a Commission for the Party to consider future policy, organisational reform and political strategy was proposed by the National Executive Council and seconded by UNITE-ATGWU (in fact, the union withdrew its almost identical motion). Or that a lunchtime fringe meeting at the Conference addressed by Tommy Broughan, TD and Michael O’Reilly, Regional Secretary of UNITE-ATGWU, on the subject of a Labour-led electoral strategy, drew a standing room only audience. So much for kicking trade unions out of the Party.
The Irish Independent was up its own tricks. Emmet Stagg TD moved a courageous and thoughtful motion on the legalisation of cannabis, providing an insightful analysis of how continued criminalisation only facilitates drug gangs. Clearly, an informed debate on our drug laws and anti-drug strategies is long overdue (especially as, if there is a ‘war on drugs’, we lost it a long time ago). The Indo, however, didn’t bother covering this argument or use it as a pretext to explore the issues. Instead, it sought out a spokesperson for an anti-drugs group to denounce the debate as part of an attempt to smear Labour as ‘soft on drugs’. It was typical of journalism that seeks to infantilise political debate.
The media is not out to ‘get Labour’. To be fair, so much of the media are determined to run down political debate at every opportunity. So Mr. Gilmore will just have to get used to it: he will have to get used to Stephen Collins calling him ‘self-indulgent’ because he dares describe his politics. He will have to get used to newspapers saying his speech was still trying to find a policy direction, and then in the same pages claiming his speech listed policies to such an extent that the Commission will be mere window-dressing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean Labour shouldn’t draw lessons from this experience. Take the ‘will you or won’t you’ argument on political alliances. Until Labour arrives at a truly independent position, until it decides to lead an alternative to the desultory two-dish buffet that serves up only a Fianna Fail or Fine Gael-led government to the electorate, until it realises that it has a better and more exciting future than just getting a few more vote and seats and hope for the best, it will be dogged by the question of ‘who will you support’.
And if Mr. Gilmore’s speech emphasised values and principles rather than specific policy details, that doesn’t mean that any member, never mind Mr. Gilmore, underestimates the considerable task ahead, in particular creating a credible socialist (sorry Mr. Collins) economic policy. There was little by way of debate at the Conference concerning this important area, little concrete about the direction such a policy should take (apart from an unfortunate NEC motion on business regulation). Until Labour enters the ‘economic debate’ it will not be taken seriously.
And then there’s the considerable organisational problems that must be addressed, given there are whole swathes of the country where there is little if any Labour Party presence; there’s the need to make the trade union link work to the mutual benefit of both the party and the affiliated unions; there are local and European elections coming up soon – the tasks ahead will require a far-sighted and creative stewardship.
What is crucial is that Labour doesn’t allow its agenda to be driven by outside and, in many cases, hostile forces. This will entail considerable risks, however. For that same media, so determined to present Labour in its own denuded image, may well become agitated if the party goes down an authentic independent path – of how Labour is getting uppity, how Labour has the gall to think that it can be treated equally with Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, how Labour dare conduct an own open and honest dialogue with the electorate over the economy.
This may make some Labour members nervous but it shouldn’t. Reading the coverage of the Labour Party conference, you might as well be attacked for being socialists. And if that’s self-indulgent, then colour me red.
Notes on the Front 
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