If the British Labour Party will not contest elections in Northern Ireland, then the Irish Labour Party should give a commitment to contest polls as a serious socialist alternative to the centrist Alliance Party, according to political commentator, John Coulter. John can be followed on Twitter @JohnAHCoulter.

 

The collapse of the Northern Ireland Labour Party in 1987 marked the seemingly permanent demise of sensible socialism in the region. Indeed, the bitter medicine which Northern Irish socialism has to swallow is that the Alliance ‘bounce’ under MEP Naomi Long has effectively halted any chance of the centre-left controlling the so-called ‘middle ground’.

This kind of economic platform would need to come from elsewhere.

If any expected Westminster general election does not result in a Jeremy Corbyn victory, then the Irish Labour Party must deliver on its November 2018 statement that it was considering formally contesting elections in Northern Ireland. 

Had the original Stormont Parliament not been axed in 1972, there was the distinct possibility the Northern Ireland Labour Party could have seriously challenged Eddie McAteer’s Nationalist Party as the main opposition movement to the majority rule Unionist Party. 

However, instead of the civil rights movement throwing its political lot behind the NILP to form a genuine cross-community socialist party at Stormont, moderate nationalists associated with the civil rights movement decided instead to spawn a new movement in the SDLP. 

While Gerry Fitt, Ivan Cooper and Paddy Devlin wanted the SDLP to be a real Social Democratic and Labour Party, many SDLP activists saw their primary role as eclipsing the seemingly politically neutered Nationalist Party. This it achieved at a cost of being unable to attract significant numbers of Protestant working class voters to their cause. 

The NILP found itself squeezed between the soft socialism of the SDLP and the left-of-centre economic policies of the fledgling DUP as working-class Protestants flocked to the Paisley banner. Ian Paisley Senior may have been to the hard-right in terms of the constitution and the Union, but the DUP was clearly to the soft left on bread-and-butter issues for working-class loyalists. 

It should never be forgotten that the DUP was a shotgun marriage between two previously voiceless sections of the Unionist community in Northern Ireland: evangelical Christians and working-class Protestants. 

During the course of the Troubles, the left-leaning Progressive Unionist Party attempt to become a soft socialist alternative to the socially conservative policies of both the DUP (then dominated by the fundamentalist Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster) and the Ulster Unionists (who were closely aligned to the Tory Party, especially through the Right-wing pressure group the Ulster Monday Club). 

However, the PUP’s major stumbling block was not that it portrayed a pro-Union socialist voice, but that it became too closely identified with the loyalist death squads, the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Red Hand Commando. 

In short, the strong perception among many working-class Protestants was that the PUP was the political apologist for the UVF and RHC in the same way that Sinn Féin was viewed as the political apologist for the Provisional IRA. 

Indeed, such was the distrust of the PUP among the evangelical and fundamentalist wings of the Unionist family that the PUP was at one time branded as ‘the Shankill Soviet’. 

The PUP’s greatest achievement was winning two Assembly seats in the original mandate of 1998, the late David Ervine in East Belfast and Billy Hutchinson in North Belfast. Within a decade, both these seats were lost. 

The 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement sparked the campaign for equal citizenship and the desire to have the UK’s main parties contest elections in Northern Ireland. While Northern Ireland Tories responded positively, the British Labour Party has still to give its electoral blessing to official candidates. 

For many years, Northern Ireland socialists seeking to join the British Labour Party even had their cheques returned and told to join Labour’s sister party, the SDLP. There was no way socialist-leaning unionists would join an overtly nationalist party. 

At one time, the UUP dabbled with left-leaning politics when it was the majority unionist party with the pressure group, Unionist Labour. However, this particular pressure group had little influence within the UUP and was merely the party hierarchy paying political lip service to the labour movement. 

Since the demise of the NILP, there have been numerous attempts to get a broad Left labour party organised across Northern Ireland to give the region’s socialists a clear voice. In recent years, whilst the party, People Before Profit, has notched up electoral success at council and Assembly levels, that success has largely been in nationalist areas and the party is perceived in many unionist quarters to be a hard Left movement rather than a soft socialist party. 

It would be seen as Marxist-Leninist at least, as revolutionary Trotskyist at best. 

In spite of PBP gains, there is still a gap on the political Left spectrum in Northern Ireland for a soft socialist party which could radically oppose the success of the Alliance Party as the credible alternative to the DUP/Sinn Féin domination of the political map. 

There can be no doubting that the Brexit debate, whether from Leave or Remain points of view, has opened the discussion on all-island political structures. 

Should the pro-Union community be preparing itself for a border poll and potential Irish unity? Should Southern political parties contest Northern elections? Who should merge with whom to form an all-island or all-Ireland identity? Should unionists even consider contesting elections in the Republic? 

Underlying all these questions is the key issue: when is a major labour party going to contest elections in Northern Ireland? 

The blunt solution is simple. If Jeremy Corbyn’s British Labour Party will not formally contest Northern Ireland polls, then the Irish Labour Party has the moral obligation to provide Northern socialists with a relevant political voice. 

This suggestion may well raise the political heckles of existing Left-wing parties and movements in Northern Ireland, such as PBP, the IRSP, Sinn Féin, the PUP, the SDLP and even the Left-leaning faction within the Alliance Party. 

But the bitter reality is that Northern Ireland needs a credible soft socialist movement and Irish Labour is in the driving seat to provide that solution. Unless, of course, existing Left-wing parties and movements can form a Broad Left Coalition – but that’s a discussion for another time!