Republican News · Thursday 24 October 2002

Nice - the real winners were?

BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN

So, after the Nice vote, how did it feel waking up in the heart of Europe? While you might not have felt heart warmed, it was clear that in the 26 Counties the changed political landscape signalled in May's Leinster House election was even more crystallised.

Sinn Féin and the Greens are the effective and dynamic opposition in 26 County political life. It was their leadership that garnered over 500,000 No votes in the Nice Treaty. It was Sinn Féin and the Greens who provided a voice for the broad left who were muted by the leadership of the trade union movement and the Labour party in this referendum

Yes there was a surge to the Yes side in this referendum, but they must know that their failure to engage on the actual details, their emotional appeals to voters not to exclude the 12 applicant states, means that they are living on borrowed time. This is because the issues raised by the No side about the lack of democracy, the erosion of sovereignty and the concerns about neutrality are real and will bite in the coming months and years.

YES SIDE FAILED

They must know too that despite the money and the array of vested interests shepherded out on the Yes side, that they singularly failed to convince any No voters first time around to change their mind.

What did happen was that a huge amount of efforts were made and resources expended to simply coerce Yes voters into actually turning out at the polls.

The No side too have a clearer picture of the mountain they have to climb. They have to reflect on whether the referendum was a good result in that they got their vote out or was it a case that their support stood still and the referendum was a setback. The more upbeat analysis holds up, as huge pressure was exerted on No voters to back down this time around. That they didn't shows a level of political depth in the No side absent in much of the Yes vote.

All of the Yes parties have admitted the flaws in the EU political and economic project. None of them have been prepared to tackle these problems. Instead they are content to promote what Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams called "the politics of the least worst option".

SILENT LABOUR

Perhaps, though, the most critical and uncommented aspect of the Treaty campaign is the role played by the Labour Party. Labour are now to all intents the silent third party in government. Their support for the Nice Treaty under the slogan "a different kind of Yes" puts them firmly in the pocket of the political establishment and on the side of the one of the most conservative alignments in Irish politics since the 1913 Lockout.

The clamour of establishment voices for a Yes vote was not just the usual lies of the establishment political parties. It also includes much of the 26-County media, the leadership of a directionless and jaded trade union movement, but interestingly not its members, and as already mentioned a Labour Party whose lack of stomach for opposition has made them passive lapdogs, lost without the perks and privileges of government.

Labour's failure to oppose the proposed changes in Leinster House standing orders which will effectively let Bertie Ahern abscond from answering questions from deputies and give him a one-and-a-half-day week will be the acid test of their commitment to offering a real political opposition.

FUNDAMENTALISTS

We must also study the politics and strategies of the self styled No to Nice Campaign and their fundamentalist Catholic conservative ethos.

They have been a shadow over not just this but many other referenda. The time has come for them to stop hiding and piggybacking these campaigns. The last election showed that the electorate had little sympathy with their Christian centrist ideology. Their sole contribution to this referendum was to hamper the work of the real No campaigners and highlight their own twisted view on the world we live in today.

Finally, Sinn Féin activists who spent long hours organising, leafleting, postering and canvassing in this election need to take stock on a job well done in difficult circumstances with legs still tired from the elections. The bad news is that we have regroup and move on. There is still a world to win.