19.09.2024

Richard Boyd Barrett: the ‘collective’ leader

Best laid plans go awry

People Before Profit’s long held commitment to supporting a ‘left government’ led by Sinn Féin is heading for the rocks. But, argues Anne McShane, aspirations of becoming junior ministers were always about the lure of careerism and narrow personal advantage

After more than four years of a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael government we are now in the run-up to a general election.

It was an unprecedented moment in Irish politics when the two main bourgeois parties formed a governing coalition in 2020. These ‘free state’ bourgeois parties have faced each other off as rivals since 1932 - a duopoly - with smaller parties and independent TDs (MPs) propping up each regime. In 2020 it was the Green Party.

It was an innovative deal resulting in three governments since that year; the first led by Micheál Martin of FF, the second by Leo Varadkar of FG, and the third by Simon Harris. And, despite only having 79 out of 160 seats between the main parties, it has been a stable entity, able to rely either on the Greens or so-called ‘independents’, eager for their slice of the pie. Many being former members of FF and FG and therefore well versed on how to cut a lucrative deal.

The impulse behind the two parties overcoming their traditional enmity was, of course, the rise of Sinn Féin. It won the second highest number of seats, going from 23 to 37, and the majority of first-preference votes. If it had stood the same number of candidates as the main parties, it could have won 47 seats, making it the major coalition partner in any government. Both FF and FG refused to go into government with it, depicting it as an extremist nationalist party with continuing links to the ‘terrorist’ IRA.

Mary-Lou McDonald, president of SF, set about ensuring that it did not fall short again. Since 2020, as well as campaigning to build the party’s profile and recruiting more candidates to stand, she has steered it even further to the right, towards an unquestionably pro-imperialist stance. In 2022 Michelle O’Neill, then vice-president of SF, attended Queen Elizabeth’s funeral in Westminster Abbey. She subsequently accepted an invitation to be among the gathering at King Charles’s coronation in May 2023. In February 2024, in her capacity as first minister, O’Neill sent her best wishes following his cancer diagnosis. SF now wants to reassure the UK that the British state has nothing to fear from it, and everything to gain. Resistance to British imperialism has been replaced by fawning diplomacy.

Right shift

In the war on Gaza, SF has lobbied the government for more action at the International Court of Justice and to pass the Occupied Territories Bill, banning the import of goods from illegally settled land. It has promoted the Palestinian Authority, organising tours of schools, universities and local councils to introduce its ambassador, Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid, while protecting her from criticisms about the treacherous role of the PA. But, when the Irish Palestine Solidarity Movement demanded that it boycott the Patrick’s Day celebrations at the White House with the arch-imperialist warmonger, Joe Biden, McDonald refused. Both she and O’Neill attended, with the latter making an utterly nauseating speech, completely uncritical of Biden’s arming of Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

SF has also shifted its position on Nato. In 2023 it stated that, if elected to government, it would not withdraw from any existing EU and Nato ‘defence’ arrangements. Now in 2024 its defence spokesperson, Matt Carthy, has gone further, stating that “Sinn Féin are not opposed to defence cooperation with other states or international bodies”. It is beyond doubt that, if elected, SF will be a willing servant of international imperialism.

On February 3 Michelle O’Neill was appointed first minister of Northern Ireland. There were many predictions that this would end with SF in government both north and south. However, its standing in the polls began to slip. In May it was at its lowest point in the polls since 2020, with a significant loss of support among younger voters, who had supported it enthusiastically in 2020. The local and European elections confirmed this. SF emerged with 21 councillors, an increase of just over 2.5%, and only one additional MEP. The government parties came out of the elections unharmed, with nationalist independents gaining new ground. McDonald admitted that it had been a bad election and “lessons would be learned”. And, of course, that meant another shift to the right.

It would be a remarkably big one. On July 15 McDonald featured on RTE, the national radio station, where she announced that she had been “told directly by our base” that issues relating to immigration and the housing of asylum-seekers “needed to be aired respectfully”. The following week SF published its new policy, which committed it to establish the “partial designation’ of some countries as “safe”, meaning that more asylum-seekers could be deported. A SF government would “institute bilateral arrangements between Dublin and London to ensure safe return of asylum-seekers.”

Remarkably, SF spokesperson Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire stated that this would include establishing a border police unit between north and south. Its new policy complains that the government has failed to effectively deport failed asylum-seekers and it will make sure that those who are “not eligible for international protection here in Ireland really leave”.¹ It wants state-owned reception and processing centres, and a dedicated police force, to ensure that nobody escapes detection.

SF is steering to the right of the government in its migrant policy, which is saying something. At the present time, single male asylum-seekers are not being accommodated, resulting in more than 2,000 sleeping on the streets. These migrants - a significant number from Congo, Palestine, Afghanistan and Syria - face brutal attacks from far-right groups. The number of so-called ‘safe countries’, where human rights are said to be protected in spite of asylum claims, has increased to 13, including Egypt and Algeria. The European Pact on Migration and Asylum, being introduced to strengthen the borders of Fortress Europe, will mean even more dehumanising treatment for migrants.

The right lurch of SF on migration has produced problems for those tied to the notion of a left government. The most prominent being People before Profit, which is, of course, dominated by the ‘collective leadership’ of Richard Boyd Barrett and his Socialist Workers Network (an affiliate of the International Socialist Tendency). At the moment PBP has just four TDs, but RBB clearly has grand ambitions, beginning modestly enough with serving as a junior minister in a Mary-Lou McDonald government.

SF’s right lurch has caused a crisis in PBP. As shown by the September 14 national council meeting, not a few fear that PBP itself risks being dragged to the right in the pursuit of promoting individual careers. Leaks to the Irish Independent of an internal briefing showed that there was a demand for action against PBP councillor in Sligo, Gino O’Boyle, who allegedly entered into a deal with SF to vote for an FF mayor in exchange for him being supported for the deputy mayor position. The article published on September 8 described a motion from the Cork branch which stated that if it was proved that he had done so, O’Boyle should be formally asked to resign as deputy mayor “as taking this role under a FF mayor is not in line with PBP’s position on kicking out FF and FG, as stated prominently in our local election manifesto”. Further, any repetition of his actions “will be incompatible with continued membership of PBP” and the steering committee should make clear that the party “does not accept any logic of ‘special circumstances’ used to excuse such actions”.² This motion was successful, despite determined push-back efforts by the ‘collective leadership’.

Cork branch

Another motion put forward by the Cork branch was unfortunately not successful. The Red Network, one of three of the permitted factions in PBP, published its position on Sinn Féin on its website on September 9. The second Cork motion called on the ‘collective leadership’ to reconsider its position on SF and the ‘left government’ slogan. Red Network states that the current position of PBP is to go into government with SF, but use the ‘red lines’ tactic “as an excuse to walk out and support Sinn Féin externally and case by case”. RN has “never agreed with this dishonest position”. And, while it concurs with the need to get rid of the FF/FG government, “we have to tell the truth about Sinn Féin’s hesitation to challenge the establishment, and the danger that, without external pressure from the working class, they would coalesce with the establishment”. Its position is that PBP should not enter government with SF, but instead “offer external support for a Sinn Féin-led government and vote for it on a case-by-case basis”.³

The Socialist Party in Ireland, which stands as Solidarity in the Solidarity/PBP coalition, has been engaging in debate with members of the Rise faction of PBP. A recent article makes some very useful points against the PBP majority. It argues that

PBP’s mistaken approach to Sinn Féin is only becoming more problematic, as Sinn Féin responds to pressure from the establishment and the far right by shifting its own position to the right - most notably, and disgracefully, on the issue of immigration. To be clear, Sinn Féin hasn’t just failed to resist the rise in anti-immigration sentiments (which it was in a strong position to do): its approach on this issue (criticising the government’s policy from the right, not the left) has added to them - effectively legitimising the lies and scaremongering of the far right, with all the dangerous consequences this has for migrants and people of colour especially.⁴

However, the SP is also a proponent of a “left government”:

We of course agree with highlighting the demand for a left government, as an essential part of realising the socialist policies that are so necessary to resolve the multitude of crises facing working class people today. Moreover, we agree with the need to imbue people with the confidence that realising such a left government is possible - pointing especially to the potential power of movements of workers and young people.

Here is the crux of the problem. While the Cork branch of PBP, Red Network and the SP all quite rightly point to the dangerous illusions being created by the commitment to enter into government with SF, they subscribe and promote a dangerous illusion themselves - the possibility of a “left government” under capitalism, most likely led by SF. They argue that this would be a step forward for the working class. They have not learned the lessons of the disaster of Syriza in Greece - a disaster borne by the Greek working class, which found itself on the sharp end of EU austerity, as government attempts to resist collapsed in chaos.

Comrades must see that the only way for the working class to transcend the system is by building its own revolutionary party - committed to fight for our class to become the ruling class. And this has to happen as part of a European revolution at the very least. There are no short cuts. The election of socialist TDs means building a platform to build our working class strength against capitalism, not a compromise with a populist party, which PBP knows will be an enemy of our class.

When SF promises attacks on migrants, it is promising attacks on the working class itself. The SP is wrong that it is simply a “mistaken approach”. For PBP to press ahead with a project to put that party in power is an act of opportunist treachery.