It seems a historic victory is on the horizon for Catherine Connolly in the Irish presidential election. At the time of writing the votes are still being counted, but every indication is that Connolly, an avowedly left-wing TD, will be the commanding winner. Early reports suggest she has mopped up in Dublin – ‘it’s a massacre’ as one commentator has put it – and will have similarly resounding results across the 26 counties. 1Irish citizens in the North and abroad don’t have a vote, something Connolly criticised repeatedly during the campaign.
The establishment assumed this would be a safe win for either Fine Gael’s Heather Humphreys or Fianna Fáil’s Jim Gavin – bookies had Connolly in third place in a three-horse race just over a month ago. Yet with a united left and an energetic grass roots movement behind her, Connolly’s campaign steadily gained momentum to overtake the right-wing candidates and is set to claim a resounding victory.
With all left-wing parties backing Connolly, this election was fought along a clear left-right divide, particularly after Jim Gavin dropped out of the race. Heather Humphreys was the self-described candidate of business, promising to use her term as president to go on trade missions across the world. She stood for the Fine Gael-Fianna Fáil led status quo that is pushing to erode Irish neutrality and refuses to take action against Israel’s genocide. These are the same parties responsible for the crises in housing and healthcare.
Catherine Connolly, on the other hand, stood on a strong record of opposition to the right-wing policies of FG-FF. In particular, she made it clear that she was the candidate for peace, neutrality and solidarity with Palestine. The night before the election, Simon Harris appealed to “middle Ireland” to come out and say “we don’t want to send out a message of this country being far left”.
There is no doubt that this election was a victory for the broad left, an important achievement in light of the recent rise of the far right, and one that will raise the sights of the left in Ireland, both North and South. It has shown that when politics are fought out on a left versus right basis the left can win, provided the left presents a forthright opposition to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The argument for ruling out coalition with those two parties has never been stronger.
All socialists should be unabashedly enthusiastic about the space the Connolly campaign and the result has opened up for left wing ideas – and most urgently, for movements on the streets for radical change in Irish society.
Establishment
The longer the race went on, the more desperate the establishment became. Jim Gavin’s withdrawal from the race has provoked a minor crisis in Fianna Fáil – knives are being sharpened for a push against Mícheál Martin. Gavin’s campaign was a disaster, from his poor performance in the debates, to his statement that Israel’s “military objectives have probably been reached” in Gaza, to the revelations that he had failed to pay back €3,300 to a former tenant who had accidentally overpaid him. Would Billy Kelleher have been a better choice for Fianna Fáil? Perhaps, but he would still have had to stand over Fianna Fáil’s failures on housing, even if he didn’t have such an egregiously symbolic scandal attached to him.
Likewise, some might view Heather Humphreys as a particularly poor candidate for Fine Gael. From her record on disability justice to her ties to the Orange Order, including political support for a member of the Orange Order and former UDR member, to her defence of fox hunting as a rural pursuit, it’s possible that Fine Gael might have been able to find themselves a smoother operator. Indeed, when Fintan O’Toole is chiding you for being a sore loser in the last week of the campaign, it’s a sure sign that things have not gone according to plan.
Humphreys launched attack after attack about Connolly’s anti-imperial stance. But the scale of the Palestine movement in Ireland shows how many people refused to be deluded by these transparent attempts at slander —people who reject the idea that Ireland should be dragged further into EU and NATO militarism, who don’t want to see the deployment of Irish troops abroad, and who oppose the government’s refusal to sanction Israel and its blocking and watering down of the Occupied Territories Bill.
Ivan Yates went viral for suggesting Fine Gael “smear the bejaysus” out of Catherine Connolly, but less quoted was his admission that “the ten years of being in government and your great minister and your great CV is actually an albatross around her neck”. Humphreys might have gone off the deep end, landing herself a defamation suit for rerunning the discredited attack line that Paul Murphy “locked Joan Burton in her car” and throwing Fine Gael’s supposed respect for legal institutions out the window as she ignored the cab rank rule and repeatedly brought up Catherine Connolly’s work representing financial institutions as a barrister.
The point is that Humphreys and Fine Gael would not have been in this desperate position if it weren’t for their record in government and the fact that there was a unified left campaign ready to take them to task over it. The Irish establishment, behind the scenes, is never very far away from crisis. The collapse of the support for civil war parties is stark. Yet it took principled unity, organisation, and a grassroots movement from below for the left to be able to capitalise.
A United Left From Below: how it was built, why it was effective
There are major positive lessons to be learned from the experience of the united left campaign that got Connolly elected. Firstly, this didn’t come from nowhere – the socialist left played a major role in bringing it about. People Before Profit fought hard for a united left candidate and were among the first to nominate Connolly. Public pressure had to be put on Sinn Féin to support Connolly, which they ultimately did to great effect, putting their shoulder to the wheel and giving it their absolute all.
And much of the groundwork for the shape of the campaign predates the campaign itself. People Before Profit activists throughout previous electoral cycles and the Connolly campaign have been committed to building a united left as a direct challenge to Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil with initiatives such as #VoteLeftTransferLeft. The Connolly campaign has shown that this strategy can mount a viable challenge to over a century of establishment governments. It has also brought into sharp relief the issue of going into government with Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil – ruling this option out from the off will be key to any left success going forward. It is also an important initial step towards addressing the low voter turnout that has characterised recent electoral cycles.
As this unity was being established among the parties of the broad left, there was a groundswell of grassroots support for Catherine Connolly. Over 10,000 people signed up for the campaign, groups such as Artists for Connolly and Gaeilgeoirí ar son Connolly were founded, fundraisers and canvasses were organised across the country. Importantly, there was a clear vision that people could get behind – a set of politics based on support for Palestine, neutrality, the Irish language, and the simple need to give Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael a bloody nose.
This is important, because there are always calls for unity on the left. However, this cannot be effective if it is simply based on just “getting along” for the sake of it – we need clear political principles and a strategic direction, as was the case with Connolly’s campaign.
One area that didn’t become a major issue during the campaign, but certainly will be in the future is the question of anti-racism. The absence of someone like Maria Steen on the ballot meant that the debates weren’t dragged in a totally racist direction. However, if this had happened, how would it have been handled by the different components of the campaign? Catherine Connolly has a strong anti-racist record, but how would Sinn Féin, who have given ground to racist arguments, respond to that kind of challenge?
The Prize at Stake
Raising these kinds of issues is not about tearing down this newfound unity, but about attempting to honestly face the challenges ahead. Across the world, both the mainstream right and the far right are ramping up racism in order to divide people and push back any potential gains for the left.
Already the establishment commentary is honing in on the number of spoiled votes and the turnout. They desire that the conversation be about anything other than the fact that the electorate overwhelmingly voted for a candidate who stands resolutely with Palestine, who recognises America as an imperial power, who is dead set against the erosion of Irish neutrality and the rush to war.
The spoiled votes are being overblown both by the far right and the establishment – it’s less than the Peter Casey vote in 2018. Nevertheless, their number is a reflection of the growth of the far right in Ireland. Of course, not everyone who spoiled their vote is far right, but there is a battle in Irish society for who can give direction to the justified anger among ordinary people at the established order. The Connolly campaign has shown that a principled left, campaigning from below, can be greater than the sum of its parts and has the unique capacity to win people back. And as Paul Murphy rightly points out: “Catherine won the largest percentage and largest total vote of any Presidential candidate in history.”
‘Divide and conquer’ is a well-known aphorism for a reason – any concessions to racism will hinder the building of the kind of united movement we need to take on the establishment. This is why these kinds of political principles are so crucial.
There is a massive opportunity to build on this unprecedented cooperation on the left and generate a fighting movement that mobilises people on the ground, not just to win what is a largely symbolic victory in the form of a presidential election, but to take the fight to Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and challenge their rule. Indeed one of the reasons behind lowering turnout has been the ambiguity by parties of the broad left about whether they would join Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael in Government. The Connolly campaign was never going to able to reverse turnout decline on its own, but it does point to how we begin to break through the apathy: ruling out coalition from the off.
Let’s not rest on our laurels, let’s make the most of what Catherine Connolly and the campaign itself has opened the door to. Let’s try and turn the vision of hope into a reality. This means mass campaigns on housing, building a movement to defend our neutrality in world that is rushing to more war, supporting strikes on workers rights like the recent School Secretaries Strike, building workers’ action on the ongoing genocide in Palestine, fighting against the cost of living crisis, standing up for trans rights and against racism – all this now becomes more possible. This means not just recognising the largely symbolic victory of Connolly as President, but seizing the opportunity presented by the political mood for real change in Ireland.
Let’s celebrate the victory, keep up the energy, apply the key lesson of the campaign by ruling out coalition with Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and go out into communities and workplaces and build serious mass movements. If we can do this, there is the real prospect of winning the first Left Government in Irish history, one that could take transformative action to challenge the rule of the ultra-wealthy and mobilise people on the streets to defend any gains from right-wing attacks.
