PUDDING FOR BERTIE AS FF EATS ITS GREENS
Jun 15th, 2007 by Conor McCabe
I had immense plans.”
Kurtz. Heart of Darkness.
So. The Greens have formed a coalition with Fianna Fáil and at a stroke have turned themselves into the most right-wing environmentalists in the world. How long will this contradiction last? Will the Irish electorate accept such a contradiction? Who knows…
The Irish electorate is willing to accept a lot, so a motorway-constructing, heritage-destroying, “Green” party shouldn’t be too much of a swallow.
At least we have learned one thing from this agreement: The Greens do not constitute a liberal party.
Only in Ireland can a party such as the Greens get away with being called liberal and social democratic. It is simply not possible to collaborate with a national construction policy that is skewered in favour of the construction industry - and not the state’s citizens - and call yourself left-wing or liberal simply because you cycle to the spot where you fuck people in the ass.
Bulldozers that run on bio-fuel are still fucking bulldozers.
But of course, the Greens are now in power and so are able to implement such Green policies as… the destruction of Tara as a heritage site and the construction of roads over public transport. The establishment of a “loft” insulation grant- costing 100 milliion euro in taxpayers’ money - over the construction of social housing. And the shelving for another five years of the Kenny report.
Every dog in the street knows that rampant land speculation has damaged not only our economy but the present lives, and future hopes, of a entire generation of our citizens - forced to live on the edge of motorways in overpriced rabbit hutches while the culprits earn billions.
These are depressing times. The Irish Labour party spent the last couple of years watering down its policies in order to forge a pact with a right-wing party, while the Greens (at six seats the second-largest liberal party in the state!) jumped into bed with the builders’ party for a puncture repair kit and a David Attenborough DVD.
The two Irish left-wing parties - Labour and Sinn Féin - despise each other. But, even if they did not, it is somehow accepted that a coalition between these two parties would somehow be a disaster for both.
More of a disaster than… what exactly?
Where does this leave social democracy in Ireland, when the best lack all conviction, and the worst are full of passionate intensity?
One of the (very) minor problems facing the left in Ireland is that it believes it knows its own history, when in fact it does not. It believes it knows why it has failed to secure Ireland as a social democracy, and the analysis is simply that it has not failed, but that it was not possible - Ireland and the Irish are not social democrats.
This is a comforting, if somewhat erroneous, conclusion. In Ireland, the best lack ambition, while the worst are full of passionate rivalry.
It is necessary to show that the left in Ireland is not simply a victim of circumstance - rather it suffers from a victim complex. The left needs to be less Steve Staunton, more Roy Keane.
This minor problem, the story of the Left in Ireland, will not secure an overall majority or lead to the trauncing of FG. Thing is, it’s something I happen to know about, being an historian of the left in Ireland. As such, it is the little bit I can bring to the table, my tiny piece in this million piece jigsaw. It is my fall-back position, something positive that I can do. And for the next couple of months I hope to write a series of posts detailing the history of the left in Ireland - not the history of Larkin and lockouts, but the history I know about, the one so seriously absent, not only from our history books, but from our mentalities as well.
There is no doubt that this election has been a disaster for social democrats. But, in many ways, we have hit bedrock. We know what we have. We know what to build upon.
And we know that come the local and next general elections the Greens need to be destroyed.
Conor, it’s not so much that they’re the most right wing Greens, as the least Green Greens in the world. Emasculated at the start…
Or the most greenhorn greens…
Either way, the speed with which they dropped their mandate (however small) in order to - I was going to say prop up Bertie, but they’re not even doing that - in order to leave opposition and co-exist with the PDs, Michael Lowry, Jackie Healy-Rae, and Beverly Cheesy grin, in order to get a grant for loft insulation, shows their true conservative middle-class bay windows ambition.
They’re Green alright - even their policies are bio-degradable.
Watching Cuffe and Ryan in particular over the last few days has been like watching recently graduated student ‘radicals’ rushing to embrace the ‘real world’ as exemplified by the cushy job in Daddy’s company; Cuffe revealingly used a raft of business metaphors to describe the pact - like all of their class, they see exchange as the template for all relations, principle and policy as tokens of that exchange.
Spot on, sonofstan. couldn’t put it better myself. what a shower of middle-class twats.
Brilliant, brilliant article Conor.
In my capacity as devil advocate, thinking, erroneously, that its just too easy to take the unmerciful piss out of the Greens for this deal, I keep on trying to think of something (anything!) positive in this turn of events - and I can’t find one. And I’ve tried.
I knew one of the Green TDs years ago, in a professional capacity. It actually pains me physically to see their face on the TV so much these days. Much has been said about Trev’s integrity in standing down as leader, which makes me laugh out loud everytime I hear it said. Why did he make the promise in the first place? He sells out every principle that his party is supposed to hold dear, gone back on every promise they made in their election campaign and they say he’s got integrity? But don’t the Green’s not really believe in a Party Leader in the first place?!
Any way, from my experience of this Green TD (in ain’t Trev) - I should have guessed that they would be capable of this. I’m not angry at the Greens for doing the deal by way. As others have said here, it just goes to prove what I always suspected of the organisation (and knew in the case of this one TD): they are just profoundly middle class.
Can I also say Conor, that you’ve written many funny things for this blog, but the line It is simply not possible to collaborate with a national construction policy that is skewered in favour of the construction industry - and not the state’s citizens - and call yourself left-wing or liberal simply because you cycle to the spot where you fuck people in the ass. has to be one that has made me laugh the most.