Ireland - how nationalism did not lead to socailism

Apologies that the blog's been off for a while, I gave up trying to make it work on my office desktop platform. But the IT guys have found a way around the problem, and with 100 days to go and all that...

This from today's Daily Record column, at all good newsagents..

Ireland, the Celtic tiger with toothache, always serves well as a barometer of Alex Salmond's economic judgement.

Never mind 100 days, for nearly 100 years Ireland has been a working laboratory of what happens to socialism in a nationalist climate.

Ireland did not have the same industrial base as Scotland, and no James Connolly, but historically it had the strength of an organised trade union and labour movement.

There have been 29 general elections to the Dàil, Ireland’s parliament, since independence. Ireland’s Labour Party have won precisely none.

When socialism goes up against nationalism in a country where all civic politics is about the nation, then Labour doesn’t stand a chance.

What happened in Ireland – in fact Irish leader Eamon de Valera’s specific strategy – was to smother the Labour movement in the embrace of Fianna Fáil.

His nationalist party talked the language of social democracy with enough rhetoric to rob Labour of a distinctive voice, while never delivering the goods.

You find an echo of that approach in last week’s report on how wonderful the welfare system would be in a new Scotland, with none of it practically costed.

If the SNP win the Scottish referendum, they will do so by binding together a nationalist alliance. The party would be mad, their leaders unforgiven, if they allowed that political sheaf to unravel afterwards.

Anyone saying defeat in September will allow the Scottish Labour Party space to rise, phoenix like, as a force for government is just kidding.

Irish history shows how easily social justice can be crowded out in a nationalist arena. When it came to industrial relations, de Valera had a reputation, a strategy, for personally intervening to bring disputes to an end, all for the good of the Irish nation.

Think of Alex Salmond placing himself at the head of the march against Diageo leaving Kilmarnock, or the First Minister’s personal intervention with Ineos to keep the Grangemouth petrochemical works open.

That episode left Unite, and by reflection trade unionism in Scotland, looking impotent in the shadow of Salmond’s influence.

The Irish trade union movement and Labour Party continue to defend the rights of working people but rarely get the opportunity to change their lives.

When Scottish trade unionists hear enticements that a single vote in September will open the door to a land of social justice, they should look to Ireland.

Not a single Labour government in the country’s history. Not one.