Fianna Fáil and the 2011 Election
I’m working on an article for The Citizen at the moment, on the general theme of ‘Is Fianna Fáil Dead?’
It’s more of a reflective piece on the development of the party since its inception 85 years ago this week, and on the contradictions between its position as a populist party with a strong working-class base, yet one that is funded by and directed towards the interests of the bankers, stockbrokers and property speculators who make up the core of Ireland’s indigenous business class.
The 2008 banking crisis brought those contradictions to a head. The party was faced with the dilemma of choosing sides - it couldn’t protect both the State’s citizens and the speculators - and so it went for the latter, and got wiped out in the polls as a result.
Yet the scale of the collapse which Fianna Fáil suffered in the 2011 election is dramatic to say the least.
Here are some figures I’ve been playing around with.
It topped the poll in only one constituency - Cork South Central - and returned more than one candidate in only two constituencies: Cork South Central and Laoighis-Offaly.
Almost 1.7 million voters in 25 constituencies have no Fianna Fáil representation in the Dáil. This accounts for around 53 per cent of the electorate.
In Dublin, however, the party has only one seat. It means that 92 per cent of voters in the capital have no Fianna Fáil representation in the Dáil.
This really is incredible. The scale of the meltdown is unprecedented. It cannot be explained purely in terms of the 2008 banking crisis. The rot set in years before.
And because of that, the ability of the party to bounce back is undermined by the same deep-rooted problems which pushed Fianna Fáil into free-fall.
How will it fund its fight-back now that the moneyed classes have left it for Fine Gael and Labour? what favours can it possibly offer when it’s all but certain that Micheal Martin will never be Taoiseach?
Having spent years ignoring its grassroots in favour of paying millions to advisers and image consultants, what is there to rally that doesn’t have a bus-pass?
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Comment by: michael burke
May 18th 2011 at 19:05
Conor,
On Gerry Adams’ blog he points out that the 1981 Hunger Strikes changed the political situation; FF was never able to govern with a stable majority following it
http://leargas.blogspot.com/2011/03/democratic-revolution.html
Prior to 1981 FF’s lowest ever vote was 41.8% and its vote in the immediate prior election of 1977 was 50.6%.
Comment by: Conor McCabe
May 18th 2011 at 21:05
Yeah I mean there’s certainly more going on with the collapse in FF support than the bank guarantee and recession. And the north’s influence and effect on the south is often overlooked, it’s true.
Comment by: William Wall
May 19th 2011 at 10:05
But equally, the long decline in FF coincides with the explosion of neoliberalism here. It’s even possible to read the Hunger Strikes as an interruption in the anti-ideological discourse that is a characteristic of neoliberal hegemony. Nobody would die for the market (except inadvertently as a victim). If someone is prepared to put their lives on the line for a cause then there is something wrong with liberal democracy. The convulsions by which liberal democracy renders hunger-strikers as mad, bad, drugged, deluded, manipulated, victims of propaganda, etc. indicates the depth of the malaise. Suicide-bombers attract the same odium. So, in a sense, that someone is prepared to starve themselves to death (that in particular) is a negation of the universal benefits of consumer utopia. This is not to negate the way the Hunger Strikes attacked the fake nationalism of FF and the damage that attack did to the old ‘FF the Republican Party’ shit.
Comment by: Paddy M
May 19th 2011 at 16:05
On Gerry Adams’ blog he points out that the 1981 Hunger Strikes changed the political situation; FF was never able to govern with a stable majority following it
I’m not sure that I’d ascribe that to the hunger strikes - SF’s vote faded away in the first 1982 election and there were no real signs of revival until 1997 outside of Cavan-Monaghan - and FF’s vote didn’t take a severe hit until 1992.
The more relevant factor was that boundaries drawn by an independent commission rather than party politicians made it more difficult to get a majority on 45-47% of the vote.
Comment by: John Goodwillie
May 21st 2011 at 20:05
“The contradictions between its position as a populist party with a strong working-class base, yet one that is funded by and directed towards the interests of the bankers, stockbrokers and property speculators who make up the core of Ireland’s indigenous business class”. Are there contradictions? Isn’t that true of every populist party?
Comment by: Conor McCabe
May 22nd 2011 at 10:05
“Are there contradictions?”
I think you’ve answered that yourself with your rhetorical question, john.
“Isn’t that true of every populist party?”
But going back to your first question, “are there contradictions?”
There’s a suggestion there that the interests of the working class and the interests of bankers, stockbrokers and property speculators are one and the same.
That is a part of the Irish intellectual tradition. It’s called corporatism. In fact, if you read the election manifesto of the Irish Labour Party, to take one example of its prevalence, they make it clear that in their view there are no contradictions, that we are all in this together.
“One Ireland. Private sector and public sector. Those with jobs and those looking for work. Employers and employees. Rural and urban. Gay and straight. Now is the time to pull down the walls that stand between the people and their government. Now is the time for Labour.”
So, in answer to your first question, yes, there are contradictions - but you knew that already as your second question shows. contradictions can co-exist as long as they have room to maneuver - in 2008 that space collapsed.