The man who could only turn right
BY MICHEAL MacDONNCHA
Despite his generally positive role in the peace process since
1994 the abiding memory of Dick Spring for republicans will be
from 1984, two years after he took over as leader of the Labour
Party. One unforgettable weekend he was on Banna Strand in his
Kerry constituency unveiling a memorial to 1916 leader and
gunrunner Roger Casement while off the coast the Navy and gardai
were arresting the IRA arms ship the Marita Ann with Martin
Ferris on board.
While Casement, safely dead, was honoured with a new statue,
Ferris was carted off to Portlaoise Prison. Earlier this year the
same Martin Ferris came close to creating the sensation of the
general election when he nearly took a seat for Sinn Féin in
North Kerry.
It is a perfect example of the twists and turns of Irish
politics. And the departure of Spring as Labour leader gives a
new twist to politics in an election year which has seen the
demolition of the Progressive Democrats, the depletion of
Spring's own party in Leinster House and the presidency of Mary
McAleese, all in the context of a revived peace process and talks
under way at Stormont.
Undoubtedly history will judge the peace process to be the most
significant issue with which Spring dealt as a minister and a
party leader. This more than anything else in the past 15 years
has changed the political landscape and has the potential to
change it even more fundamentally. But Dick Spring's claim was
otherwise at the press conference which announced his departure.
He asserted that during his 15-year stewardship of the Labour
Party the centre of gravity in Irish politics moved to the left.
It is a claim which cannot be reconciled with the record.
Undoubtedly in electoral terms Labour fared better than ever
before under Spring. The peak was in 1992 when the party won 33
seats in Leinster House, its highest total ever. At that stage it
looked set to eclipse Fine Gael as the main rival to Fianna Fáil.
But this year the election saw 17 TDs returned for Labour - only
one more than when Spring took over in 1982.
The explanation for Labour's dramatic ups and downs brings us to
the C-word and the eternal issue for the party - Coalition. At
the end of the 1960s the radicalism of the time had rubbed off on
Labour and they promised the ``Seventies will be socialist''. But
in 1973 they entered one of the most reactionary governments
ever with Fine Gael, the Coalition which gave us the Garda Heavy
Gang, increased censorship and a more pro-British foreign policy
than ever before.
Labour was riven with divisions over Coalition throughout the
Seventies. By 1982 they were in complete disarray with their
former leader Michael O'Leary deserting to Fine Gael.
Spring took over but he was no standard-bearer of the left. And
in November 1982 he duly led his 16 TDs into Coalition with
Garret FitzGerald as Fine Gael Taoiseach. It was a government of
cuts and collaboration - cuts in public services and closer
co-operation with the `security' agenda of the British government
in the Six Counties, notably on the issue of political
extradition. The Hillsborough Agreement was signed with Margaret
Thatcher, as Garret FitzGerald later admitted, principally
because of the fear that Sinn Féin would overtake the SDLP as the
leading nationalist party in the Six Counties.
Spring had little choice but to lead Labour out of Coaltion in
1987. If he hadn't done so the slump in the party's vote in the
election of February that year might have been even greater. They
were reduced to 12 seats and Spring only scraped in by four votes
in North Kerry. It is highly significant that it was after a long
period in opposition from 1987 to 1992 that Labour had its best
electoral turnout. As the most vocal and effective opposition
leader Spring seemed to promise voters a radical alternative.
But once again this was no left-wing revival. On the contrary
Spring had proved throughout his career that he could only turn
rightward. In the mid-80s Spring, like other leaders of social
democratic parties in Europe, notably Neil Kinnock's British
Labour Party, had purged the left in his organisation, adopted
market economics, distanced himself from the trade unions and
moved to the political centre.
It was regarded as one of Spring's crowning achievements that by
1995 he was leading a party in Coalition with John Bruton's Fine
Gael in which Ruairi Quinn was the first ever Labour Minister for
Finance. But so well had Labour been purged of any taint of
radicalism that such a development was totally meaningless - the
markets and the wealthy, whom Labour had once rhetorically
threatened to tax to the hilt, had nothing to worry about.
Similarly on the national question, the republican tendency in
Labour had long been isolated. Spring became a leading advocate
for the abandonment of Articles Two and Three. In what will be
one of his last contributions in Leinster House as Labour leader,
Spring on Tuesday again called for changes in the Articles.
Spring thus leaves a negative legacy to his party on the three
big issues - the national question, the social and economic
agenda and the coalition strategy. Who will succeeed him and
which direction will the party take? That is another day's work.
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