Dreaming of a united Irish Opposition Movement

national | politics / elections | opinion/analysis Friday June 04, 2004 21:04 by Brian Nugent bnugent at tinet dot ie

Calling for a more co-ordinated approach by the various activist groups and small parties that seem to agree on the big issues and showing one way that hopefully ,maybe, it could be done.

A few weeks ago a dubliner writing here was saying that he was going to vote for the Socialist Party , the Green Party and Sinn Fein in the coming election and advised all those who hold the general activist beliefs (against the growing inequality in Ireland and the third world , against the war etc ) to do the same .He acknowledged that some anarchists had no faith in voting but he felt that realistically having people like Patricia McKenna and Joe Higgins as public representatives was better than having the others. What I would put to indymedia readers is that there is some kind of consensus that if the disparate groups that say oppose the Iraq war and generally agree on most of the other issues could come together and form a more united opposition movement that it would create a bigger impact than they are currently making as separate groups. Firstly here are some problems that I heard mentioned and need to be addressed before this could take off the ground:

1) If you ask people involved in some of the groups they will tell you that they already co-operate with many different groups in issues of mutual concern and will continue to do so. Hence to a degree they dont see the need for more unity. Of course in practise the ad hoc groups that have been formed dont get much public recognition because they change every time for every march and issue so that the (not inconsiderable) size and following that many of these of these groups command together is not really noticed by the mass of the people. Only a group that would have say a recognisable logo, flag etc and is visibly part of the organising of most marches , referendum campaigns , whatever, will get noticed and build up a kind of momentum.

2) That each party and grouping has their own identity and philosophy which can not be glossed over or subsumed into some watered down lowest common denominator in a wider grouping. The structure that I propose I dont think carries that risk, no party would be asked to sign up to a particular philosophy and so wont have lost sight of their own.

3) A subterranean reason that I think is very real but maybe not often mentioned as such is that people are wary about the motivations of some groups out there in the left in irish politics and possibly feel that some of them are not what they seem.Especially those groups which seem to want to set up cooperative structures that maybe they would then hope to control.In short no group wants to be subjected to a kind of giant trollerisation by groups who would be working to control and disrupt the opposition groups on behalf of some higher (as in lower) agenda .If you read indymedia articles on the experience some groups had in one of the anti-war groupings you can see what I mean. And yes I dont think they are paranoid, as it is on newsgroups then so it is in real life for some opposition groups and they are understandably wary .Again when you see the structure of the proposed united group that I put forward you can see hopefully that it doesnt allow for some group to manipulate the rest. It would not have a leader or all powerful governing council or anything like that.

The structure of the party would be that any group/individual can join and no person/group can be expelled for any reason.
So yes that means that the anti-immigration groups and axe murders anonymous can join! This is not the great problem it might seem though , its very unlikely any of parties like that would get any of their policies through by consensus and in practice any very right wing party is unlikely to want to join. I know that Michael Lowry and other politicians are in the technical group but I dont see anything wrong with that, we should have a welcoming attitude to anybody who wants to make a difference and no doubt some of the media demonised groups/people are not as bad as all that and I think the general public will recognise that and appreciate the freedom of speech principles that this rule enshrines. As regards not expelling people that will lead to having to listen to a lot of trolling at meetings and other problems but if indymedia and other groups can survive and still hold to free speech then I think this party can do it. After a while I think people do get educated as to these things and the trolling becomes less effective. I also wouldnt worry about sneering in the media about people they dislike, the general public can grasp that rule and understand it after a while.

Decisions made at any level would be by consensus. Consensus incidentally in this way is not unanimity (it cannot be unanimity because of trolling if nothing else) and its certainly not the block majority voting that you have in the established party conferences. I think its somewhere in between where a given group can see clearly that a way forward has been agreed by the vast bulk of the people present .I think this already works in many parties like the Dublin Grassroots Network, the Green Party and I think Sinn Fein quite well, its a perfectly practical way of proceeding despite what some might claim. (Im sure people from those groups that use consensus could elaborate on how it works if asked).

To get this up and running what I propose in short is that the activist groups join with the small parties and independents in the dail and put some life into the moribund structures of the technical group.( There that surprised you didnt it?.lol......)
The technical group is one of the largest Irish political parties (I think the third largest after FF and FG), its the name of the group founded by the independents, SF, the Greens and Joe Higgins of the socialist party which they created in order to get around the rules that the big parties had put in place to deny the small parties speaking time in the Dail.
So maybe somehow Tony Gregory (the chief whip of the technical group) could be persuaded to call a national conference of the technical group inviting both all the parties already affiliated to it and the various activist groups to come and see whether or not there could be agreement to establish some permanent structures for a combined Irish opposition movement. (And maybe might change the name from the technical group to some name like the Irish Opposition Movement or something like that.) Of course each party is different and with their own policies. What this structure is about is just organising a central grouping that could be useful to co-ordinate matters where the individual parties were broadly in agreement. The point is that those parties ARE in agreement on so many matters. A short time ago I was listening to Gerry Adams totally condemning the US military using Shannon which is so far as I know exactly what all these other groups believe.
In other words you are creating a permanent national structure that can be used where the parties want to run a combined campaign and I strongly believe they will find themselves agreeing on issues far more often than they might realise.
Say these structures :

1) An annual combined conference like the first one. I think all can see that such a conference could be a pretty exciting and heartening exchange of views away from the controlled dail and the navel gazing of the small conferences of the individual parties. The conference would issue the results of their deliberations as the consensus of their debates.

2) A central party newspaper. Maybe with sections that would allow editorial independence given to the various groups. Clearly that would have immediately quite a big circulation and again much better than each individual group can muster. If there is one thing everybody agrees on is misrepresentation in the media....

3) Possibly some combined offices / phone numbers distributed around the country. That way if the technical group was organising anything together people would know where to go to find out about it and who to ask .Might be particularly helpful in organising transport together. Again all these parties together could do a lot more in this way than the parties separately.

4) Hopefully agreement could be reached on a combined manifesto prior to a general election and also an agreed document on any referendum. But this would be far down the road as I see it. So possibly in the long term then when canvassing in a general election maybe an individual party would say this is the manifesto of the Irish Opposition Movement/Technical Group that we are joined with but also here is our own manifesto which shows where we are coming from and the kind of influence we exert within the technical group. It means then that no party or group would ever be signing away all its principles or policies .It would just be combining them (in this clearly temporary fashion) where a united stand in a larger group would be helpful. I stress again that this step should only be taken down the road if people were comfortable with this group and arrangement, if no manifesto can be agreed it doesnt mean that the other structures couldn?t work very well IMHO.

The various parties could then put a logo on their posters saying "affiliated with the Irish Opposition Movement" or some such. Also if agreement was reached then referendum campaigns could be run and seen to be run by that party. Similarly for marches and protests, and this should show the people at large that there is an organised, united, and large group of people out there trying to change the system.
Furthermore this grouping could be used to get around the very strenuous rules that the main political parties have put in place hindering independents from running in elections. You can read about those serious problems here. Instead people can run as a member of this new party (a member of a political party doesnt have to go through the bureaucratic nightmare described).The way it would work anybody can ask and would be permitted to run as a member of this party and again sure axe murders could run therefore but I think it work out as I described above about the party in general. I think the general public would see that this loose arrangement would be a genuine step in favour of free speech and against the blatantly arrogant attempt of the main political parties to stifle same. And of course anyway the decision of who gets elected is therefore left up to the electorate.


The way I see it is that it would evolve as a movement with various weapons at its disposal to highlight and oppose the problems in the current system. It would have people going on marches as now and also have people in the dail with both aspects of opposition feeding off and helping one another. It would in that sense be the same as the great groups like the repeal movement (obviously Daniel O Connell contested all those elections while at the same time he made his point with monster meetings et al ) and the "plan of campaign" of Michael Davitt which worked alongside the parliamentary efforts of Parnell. So its not "either or" between direct action/street politics and normal parliamentary politics.


Here is my very short bio. of some of the smaller parties and how I think they would gain from such a grouping :

Sinn Fein
Clearly they cannot talk about the price of a pint without being drowned in negative coverage about a one sided view of the northern conflict. It therefore might help the party to be part of a wider grouping where no particular spokesperson for such a party can be tarred with the terrorism brush as easily and so allow their party members to articulate all the other issues.

Green Party
The party closest to the environmental activist groups around the country and with a party structure of seeking consensus and not having a central leader up until recently and so hopefully comfortable with the party structure that I propose.

Dublin Grassroots Network
Which is already a central co-ordinating body for some of the smaller groups and with as far as I know a structure virtually identical to what I propose and so maybe might be in favour of such a bigger grouping.

Socialist Party
(I believe this party grew out of a group that were originally expelled from the labour party for being too left wing allegedly and includes Joe Higgins TD). Their direct action attempt that they made with the bin tax revolt has I suppose had mixed results but now that the St Vincent de Paul are saying that the charges are causing real hardship for many poor people (who predictably are not getting relief from the waivers that they were supposed to get) their attempts on this subject are probably quite widely appreciated in retrospect. Maybe they will agree that the key to protest movements and pickets etc just as much as for political parties is simply weight in numbers. They couldnt hope to arrest everyone if a larger group was involved in those pickets. Clearly the best way to get large numbers is to cooperate with these other groups the vast majority of whom I suspect are also very much on the same side as regards the bin tax etc.

Anarchist Groups
The problem here is that unlike many of the other parties some in the anarchist groups oppose elections per se because it fosters a kind of dependence culture on the state and politicians. Personally I think the time has long gone when people had great faith in the current electoral system and I think there is a lot of agreement out there that it doesnt really work. What I would point out is that a group like the proposed one is something for every party to use as much as it wishes. So any group that doesn?t want to help out in electoral stuff certainly doesnt have to, nor do they have to put up candidates themselves or anything like that. On the other hand they might feel comfortable assisting in organising marches and referendum campaigns.

So thats my tuppence hapenny , hopefully it might be possible......