Gilmore addresses opening meeting of 21st century Labour commission
Issued : Saturday 29 March, 2008
Speech by Eamon Gilmore TD
Leader of the Labour Party, Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs & Trade
Colleagues and Friends
Thank you for being here today, at this, the first meeting of the 21st Century Commission.
As you know, the Labour Commission has been established by the NEC on foot of Conference motion, which mandates you to 'to examine and report on all aspects of the Party's organisation campaigning and political activity and in particular to make recommendations on the role which Labour should undertake in the modern Ireland'
The membership of the Commission is representative of the different elements of the party, including the PLP, the constituency organizations, Labour's councillors, our staff, and the party sections.
I am particularly grateful to Greg Sparks for agreeing to chair the Commission. He will have the assistance of a small consultation Group selected because of particular expertise or knowledge who will make their skills and time available to Greg.
Your recommendations will go to the NEC in the autumn, in time for a Special Delegate Conference in late November. That timescale set for you by the NEC is demanding, but the task is an urgent one, and I have every confidence that Greg, of all people, will ensure that your work proceeds expeditiously.
As the name implies, your task is nothing less than developing a blueprint for a 21st century Labour Party. A party that is relevant to, and successful in, contemporary Ireland. Successful in motivating people to join us, successful in winning elections, and successful in improving Ireland.
Before embarking on your work, it is worth pausing to reflect on the significance of the task - on the goals that a 21st century Labour Party must achieve.
Why does 21st Century Ireland need a 21st century Labour Party?
Labour is the authentic Irish expression of a great European political movement - socialism. The origins of that movement can be found in a gathering of activists and émigrés held in Paris in 1889 - which founded the 2nd socialist international. The groups represented at that Paris conference grew into a major European political force, each working in their own countries in their own ways, but sharing a common set of aspirations and values about the kind of human society they wished to create.
Their success was not inevitable. There were other movements that might have captured the hearts and minds of the working people of Europe in the 20th century. It was social democracy, in the main, that did so, partly because of its programmatic coherence, partly because of its organisational strength, partly because it had a strong focus on a better future, not an idealised past. Grievance is not enough in politics - you must have a vision for the future and a plan for achieving it.
Our party must once again find that coherence of expression. All of us have come into the party for different reasons, motivated by different moments in our lives, or in the life of our country. We could, all of us, give a passionate and valid statement of what Labour means to us. The passion and commitment of our members is the core of our strength as a party. But we must go beyond individual stories. We must, as a party, bring together those individual voices into a common chorus. We must be ready to present the Irish people with a clear and understandable statement of what our party, Labour, stands for in modern Ireland. Not just pertaining to the immediate concerns of today, but to Ireland as it will be between now and 2020 - and indeed beyond.
That common statement must be rooted in our common values. As your terms of reference state, those values - of equality, solidarity, community, and democracy- are timeless. Our task is to express them in the language of modern Ireland, and to make them relevant in the lives of our people.
There is a need for us, in particular, to expand the meaning of the term 'Labour' in the way we speak and are spoken of. We must go beyond old images of a downtrodden proletariat and smokestack industries - beyond the idea of Labour as an interest group representing a particular form of paid manual employment. Yes, those are our origins, and we are proud of them. But the context of Labour today relates to work in a much wider sense.
Labour today applies to those who work for themselves, as well as those who work for employers. Labour is not confined to paid work, but applies to those who work at caring - for the elderly, for children and for those with disabilities. Labour is about the priceless work of those who volunteer, who make a contribution through their energy and genius to building our economy and our society. It is about all who contribute to the life of our community.
Labour is not a description of work - or simply a label for a political movement. Labour is a set of values.
Sometimes, the words which express those values - equality, solidarity, community, democracy - and which mean so much to us, may seem remote and abstract to a wider audience. What lies behind them is a simple but radical view of the purpose of politics.
To be Labour, is to see and recognise in others the common light of our shared humanity. To encounter another person, and to see just that - a person. Not to view them through a lens defined by others, such as gender, race or nationality; but to see a person as a person. And to see in others something of the essence of ourselves.
That is what equality means. And Labour is, above all, the party of equality. To deny equality is to categorise another person as something other than ourselves - to deny them the full quotient of our shared humanity. To be Labour is to cherish it, and insist on it.
Our commitment to universal human rights springs from that same notion.
With humanity comes potential. To be Labour is to see and understand the limitless potential of the human condition. A potential not defined by the here and now of where we find ourselves, nor circumscribed by circumstance of birth or arbitrary restrictions imposed from without. A potential seen and understood by the men and women who founded this party in the most hopeless of social conditions. A potential not sustained by hope alone, but by the certainty inspired by centuries of human advancement.
That is what social democracy means - extending the advances of human society from the privileged few, to the many.
To be Labour is to seek a society where all can fulfil their human potential. As R.H. Tawney wrote
A society is free in so far and only so far ... as its institutions and policies are such as to enable all members to grow to their full stature'.
The great insight of Labour is that individual opportunity depends on collective effort. That working together, we can each achieve far more than we would working alone. That making common cause need not be inimical to personal freedom - rather that individual freedom is only possible when we acknowledge the rights and responsibilities of us all. That as men and women we are at our best when supported by and contributing to those around us. That is what community means.
Our vision of society is one defined, not by the collective ownership and control of industry, or the size of the state, but by a community that takes collective responsibility for achieving the full potential of each individual, and by the breath of our duties to each other.
And while that duty begins at home, it has never been confined to these shores. Our commitment to solidarity has always been an international one.
Indeed, you could say, that our task today is to extend the benefits of human advancement, begun by a small elite in the 18th and 19th centuries, and spread, highly imperfectly, to the populations of the Western world in the 20th century - to extend those benefits to the whole world, in a manner which does not threaten the existence of the world itself.
Modern Ireland needs Labour's vision, but it needs all of that vision. We cannot, as individual members, or as a party, confine ourselves to the part of it that we find most comfortable. Labour's values are, of their essence, confident and assertive, and we must have the confidence to assert them in their fullest form.
Labour is the party of public services. That means we must be the party of the public who use them, as well as the public servants who produce them
Labour is the party of schools and hospitals. We must also be the party of universities and laboratories.
Labour is the party of rights. We must also be the party of responsibilities.
Labour is the party of artists. We must also be the party of scientists.
I do not say this because I believe we need to fundamentally reinvent what we stand for, or that we should dilute our values to appeal to a wider audience. I will not speak of a 'third way', because I am not suggesting or proposing that we need to apologise for ourselves or our past. In fact, the modern Labour party has, in its policy positions, steadily up-dated itself. But where we have modernised, we have not projected that modernisation. And where Ireland has grown and changed, we have been less than successful in bringing our vision to the new Ireland.
I am proud of the history of the Labour movement in Ireland. We can all still be inspired by the courage and idealism of Connolly and Larkin. By the ideals of Tom Johnson, author of the Democratic Programme adopted by the first Dáil. Idealism that the new Irish state could put people first. That despite appalling social conditions, progress and justice were possible. The challenge now is to build on our history, and to project to the Irish people what is relevant about a self-confident, assertive and progressive left. To go beyond the battles of yesterday and the immediate demands of today. To apply our values to the issues and challenges that will confront us in the decades to come.
For in that time, issues will confront us that will change the landscape of our politics and our lives. Advances in science and technology will expand the frontiers of human possibilities, not just in the economy, but also in medicine. As medicine advances, we may well be confronted with a new debate about the right to life - about who will have access to new therapies and treatments and who will not. In today's Ireland, where health is increasingly a market commodity, it is not hard to imagine health care and life expectancy becoming more, not less, dependent on income.
As the threat of global warming and its effects become more acute, it is not hard to foresee deep political questions about who will pay for carbon abatement, or whether the state can and will take responsibility for delivering clean water to every home.
As Ireland adjusts to the reality that one in ten of our people were born outside the country, new issues and tensions may arise. As global economic forces make themselves felt, the demand will grow for an ethical, civilised and sustainable globalisation. As the reality of Ireland as a peaceful and prosperous country becomes less surprising to us all, new demands for Ireland to play a more prominent role in world affairs may arise.
How will Labour confront these new challenges? How will we apply our values to these issues?
Again and again, we will come back to the idea of an Opportunity society - an Ireland where all of our people have the opportunity to flourish.
Labour must be the party of opportunity, not just for the few, or for the strong, or for the young, or for those who have been here the longest, but for all our people. Opportunity does not come when the state stands back and lets everyone get on with it, sink or swim. It comes when you give people training and skills, a basic level of security in their lives, and when you remove the vested interests and the arbitrary blockages that hold them back.
Creating opportunity for all means waging a war on poverty. That is about more than supplying a minimum income when a person cannot support themselves. It means providing people with pathways out of poverty - not just the mantra that the best route out of poverty is a job. That is true, but it is not enough. Too many of our people have to cope with a welfare system that keeps them trapped in poverty, rather than providing the means and the path to make their way out of it.
The opportunity society must embrace those who have chosen to be Irish. It must be clear about the duties and obligations that we owe each other. Respect and tolerance certainly, equal treatment definitely. But also opportunity. The opportunity to make a full life in Ireland - to work, to bring up children, to take a full part in the life of our community.
Creating an opportunity society is not confined to those most obviously denied it. An opportunity society must have something to offer to all our citizens. It means extending educational opportunities to anyone who wishes to avail of them. Building a learning culture, that takes as a given the notion that learning never stops, and never ceases to be of value. It means respecting those who see opportunities for fulfilment in caring for others. It means understanding that there are important and valuable opportunities for personal fulfilment outside the arena of paid work.
The questions that will confront us will not just be about resources. They will also be about the non-material aspects of our lives. About building a culture of respect for each other, about pushing back the tide of violence, about addressing the deficit of spirit that feeds the abuse of alcohol and drugs, and puts weapons in the hands of teenagers. About standing with parents who want to protect the ever-narrowing window of time we call childhood.
Creating opportunity for all means creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and security. That is the responsibility of the state, but it is also the responsibility of families and communities. We must somehow reverse the crude violence that has become a feature of our society. We must be rigorous in applying the law to those who break it, but neither can we ignore the fact that the criminals of tomorrow are too often young people who are falling through the cracks of our system today.
I believe too that, in the next two decades, Irish politics will increasingly focus on matters that go beyond the bread and butter of domestic concerns. With our prosperity has come a new self-confidence, which, together with peace in Northern Ireland, has provoked a new desire to define ourselves on the world stage. While there is a moral imperative for Irish society to reduce its own carbon emissions, we clearly have a role to play through the EU and the international institutions in tackling climate change. Equally, once we finally keep our promise to increase international aid to 0.7% of GNP, Ireland's voice on development issues will carry a new authority in the world.
Are we prepared to exercise that voice? Are we willing to ensure that Irish foreign policy is assertive and values-driven? If so, then we must, at a minimum, use our membership of the European Union to promote a democratic and social Europe.
Our country desperately needs an infusion of values in its politics. I am not referring here to the moral vacuum that has engulfed the Governing parties, especially in recent times. Of course, we must have ethics in our politics. That is a necessary, but not a sufficient condition of good politics - of a politics that can answer the many needs of our society. After a decade and a half of unparalleled economic growth, Irish society needs to take stock of what has been achieved, and who we have become. About how a lasting and sustainable prosperity can be maintained, in which all our people can share.
Having left behind the closed, authoritarian society of the past, and provided for a far greater measure of personal freedom, we need to ask hard questions about the society that we have created, and about the responsibility we all have for the kind of society we will bequeath to our children. About how we deal with the ills of our new society, from casual carnage on the streets to the desperation and pain of suicide.
As I said at our conference in Wexford, we need a New Purpose. Our country needs a vision of itself and what it can achieve, and a renewed sense of the values that we steer by. It is Labour's task to supply that New Purpose.
Labour must make it clear that politics is not about competing sets of technical fixes or electoral promises, but about alternative visions of society.
If Ireland is to prosper, it must be on the basis of a vision of a small, open, entrepreneurial economy in a global marketplace. Our success will be built, not on low-cost competition, but on high productivity growth achieved through investment in infrastructure and people. That investment in the skills and abilities of our people will not be sustainable in the face of gross inequality. We cannot face with indifference the growing trend towards low paid employment on one hand, and outlandish rewards for a small elite on the other.
Social solidarity is a source of productivity, not a drain on it. Equality is a complement to, not a substitute for, innovation and entrepreneurship. The New Purpose will be built on an economy that works for all, and has work for all.
That is not to say that there are not hard choices. As the halcyon days of the Celtic Tiger recede, political choices will become starker. Tightening public finances will force more exacting scrutiny of taxation and expenditure decisions. Already, we have seen the kind of choices that Fianna Fáil and the Greens are choosing to make. Services for homeless people are to be cut back, budgets for home helps are to be restricted, while at the same time new tax breaks for property developers are being introduced. Lip service will be paid to environmental goals, while the John Gormley Motorway is forced through Tara.
Labour has always been an engine of change in Ireland. Now the party that wrought so much change in Ireland, must have the courage to change itself. Now, as much as ever, our country needs new politics, based on the human and humanising values of the Labour Party. Are we up to the challenge?
The Irish Labour Party at this point in history has the potential to be the driving force for change and progress in 21st century Ireland. But we will only achieve that potential if we have the courage to make the changes in our party, which are necessary to make us more relevant and more successful in modern Ireland.
Change is never easy - especially when we are applying it to ourselves. Last September, when I was unanimously elected leader of this party, I pledged to lead a renewal of Labour in Ireland. Our conference in Wexford decided to establish this Commission, to be the means by which we as a party would collectively assess and conclude on the changes which we should make in order to make our party more successful.
The report of this Commission, and the decisions which the special conference next November will make arising from your report, will determine Labour's future, certainly for the next decade or more. You have a very important job to do, and I wish you well in it.
We are not seeking change for its own sake, but transformative change, rooted in Labour's values. It is vital that we as a party, give clear and united expression to what those values mean in modern Ireland. To be clear, with one another, and with the Irish people, about what Labour is for. Giving our country a New Purpose, and creating a society where everyone has the opportunity to flourish. Giving concrete contemporary expression to the words of Tom Johnson, written nearly ninety years ago in a very different Ireland:
We affirm the duty of every man and woman to give allegiance and service to the Commonwealth, and declare it is the duty of the Nation to assure that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the Nation's labour.
