No going back, but what’s ahead?

We tell our life stories through key events and milestones which make us who we are. Similarly, a handful of shocks impact society, economics and culture so deeply they leave a permanent imprint. Here Cian Prendiville argues that the current Covid-19 lockdown is one such era-defining moment, and discusses the long-term impacts, in particular for the left.

When ‘Reeling in the Years’ tells the story of Covid-19, it will highlight the devastation caused to families who lost loved ones and the inspiring examples of community solidarity that sprouted up across the country. No doubt Varadkar’s Paddy’s Day Churchill imitation will make an appearance too. But the historians will also talk about how this event shaped an entire decade. 

Like the collapse of the Berlin Wall, 9/11 and the crash of 2008, this crisis will set the agenda for years to come, and it can be a left-wing agenda, where the socialist ideas can flourish, if we seize the opportunity. This has enormously strengthened the case for policies such as rent control, a living wage for all workers, a fully public National Health Service, and serious action to prevent climate catastrophe. 

Despite the window dressing, a Fianna Fail & Fine Gael government will not implement such policies. Instead, increasingly people will discuss what a left government, excluding FF & FG could deliver. If the left puts forward a bold, transformative programme of socialist policies, it can capture people’s imagination in a way not seen in this country, at least not in my lifetime.

When the ‘impossible’ becomes unstoppable

On February 27th, Micheal Martin repeated the Fianna Fail mantra from the General Election that a rent freeze was unconstitutional. Exactly three weeks later, on March 19th, a rent freeze was introduced. After this, when they say rent cuts aren’t possible, why should anyone believe them? Yes, Covid-19 is an emergency, justifying emergency measures, but so too is homelessness.

In this crisis, the government has insisted that the private hospitals must be used for the public good, with patients treated in line with the seriousness of their case, not the size of their wallet. If that is the most efficient and moral way to treat Covid-19, why should cancer be any different?

This crisis has shown that where there is a will, there is a way. It was never the case that we couldn’t freeze rents. The government simply didn’t want to. “Now we know there's nothing stopping us from solving the homelessness crisis” as Dr Austin O’Carroll has put it. 

Billionaires are not essential

Last year minimum wage workers in the likes of retail were told they were ‘low skilled’, and couldn’t realistically expect a decent wage in their jobs. Now they’re told they are ‘essential workers’ who must put their lives at risk to keep society running.

We also see the massive economic contribution made by all those other workers who have not been at work during lockdown. Without their labour, the economy has come to a standstill. Even just  a few weeks without those workers has been enough to cause the biggest crash in a century. This gives a glimpse of the huge power workers have. Simply by staying home, they topple economic empires and bring massive companies to their knees. 

Having seen how essential and powerful we are, this experience should strengthen the resolve of workers to demand a better life after lockdown. 

The billionaire ‘wealth creators’, on the other hand, turn out to be non-essential, and non-productive. No one was going out to ‘Clap for our Billionaires’. They had left the factories, stores, and machines to the people who actually operate them, and disappeared off on superyachts and private islands. Yet the world still turned.

Going back, or pushing forward?

The crisis has made socialist policies even more urgent. As the economy struggles, we now have many industries in crisis. Already a major subsidy scheme has been announced for creches. A number of airlines are likely to go, and Ireland’s large airline leasing business could face challenges. Private nursing homes are likely to need ongoing state support for months, if not years. 

In 2008, faced with an economic crisis, Fianna Fail and the Greens bailed out the banks and paid for it by austerity on working people. The result was a lost decade of emigration and unemployment. We cannot repeat the mistakes of the past.

Bailing out workers, not CEOs

Rather than simply throwing cash at the private creches, this is the opportunity to bring the entire childcare sector into public ownership, and create a National Childcare Service. Finally, we could end the low pay of childcare workers, and provide quality education to all. By moving to free childcare as a right, we could also remove an extra bill from families, relieving a huge source of stress as well as boosting their spending. We can free up huge numbers of women to rejoin the workforce, pursue further education, develop their skills and talents and help rebuild our economy and society.

Now is the time for a single-tier Irish National Health Service, from the cradle to the grave. The private hospitals should stay in public control. Denis O’Brien, Larry Goodman and the other profiteers are rich enough already, they don’t need any more taxpayers money. The private nursing homes should also be brought into a fully integrated system, with better pay and conditions for workers and full support for the training necessary to ensure quality care.

Struggling airlines and transport companies shouldn’t just be bailed out and sent back out to continue burning fossil fuels and our planet. Instead, this is our chance to build a truly public transport system and begin a just transition to green technologies.

Establishment circles the wagons

Even before this latest crisis, the recent General Election already showed a growing desire for left-wing ideas. Fianna Fail & Fine Gael together got only 43% of the vote - a mere shadow of their pre-crash dominance. Sinn Fein, standing on a somewhat more left-wing manifesto than previously, managed to top the polls. Everyone agreed; the election was a cry for ‘change’.

But now Fianna Fail & Fine Gael look set to try to cobble together a government. This is not the change people voted for, but it is historic. It shows the “stable” parties of capitalism are no longer stable and can’t rule in the same way as before. The ‘end of Civil-War politics’ is really an escalation of the ‘Class War politics’ of the rich against working people. The party’s of the 1% have had to drop their Punch and Judy show and unite against their real enemy; the 99%. 

This will likely spark huge anger, as people see the establishment snatching government from the jaws of their historic defeat. While they are all promises and flowers now, we all know once they get back in they will once again try to put the burden of yet another economic crash onto the backs of the working class, one way or another.

For a left government, with socialist policies

We are on the cusp of a new period of major events. Campaigns against austerity taxes. Struggles for decent wages and conditions. Mass movements for equality and to halt environmental destruction and climate change. Demands for left and socialist policies. 

Above all, we will see a growing desire for a left government, to kick out Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, and transform society. Now that they are a minority in the Dail, and their pro-market policies are further exposed, more and more people will begin to consider the idea of a government without these traditional establishment parties. 

With a bold approach, the socialist left can make a real impact. We can’t shy away from the desire for a left government, we must embrace it. We must explain why a left government will need socialist policies if the promises of change are to be kept. 

The challenge facing a left government

While the surge in support for Sinn Fein reflects a desire for such radical change, we also cannot shy away from the reality that the Sinn Fein leadership, as it stands, do not. Still to this day they leave the door open to coalition with Fianna Fail. In the past in Stormont and on the county council’s Sinn Fein have been unwilling to take the radical approach needed. Too often when faced with diktats to cut budgets, or sell off public land, they accepted it and voted it through. Too often they have attempted to play both sides, using fighting words at mass protests but reassuring the bosses at private gatherings and $200-a-plate fundraising luncheons. This would need to change fundamentally if a Sinn Fein-led government is to keep its promises on health and housing. 

Sinn Fein seek to avoid talking about class, and instead present themselves as representing all of Ireland - the 99% and the 1% together. But as James Connolly said “When questions of class interests are eliminated from public debate a victory is thereby gained for the possessing, conservative class, whose only hope of security lies in such elimination”. In fact a left government would need to clearly be a government for workers, taking on the billionaires, not schmoozing them, or buckling under the pressure. It would need to break with the "rule" of the market and act in the interests of the 99%.

The political and business elite will resist every policy which challenges their rule and their profiteering. The EU will try to impose its Thatcherite fiscal rules to block real change, as they did to Syriza in Greece. A left government will need to reject these anti-democratic, anti-worker diktats not just in words but in deeds. That means going beyond mere parliamentary manoeuvres, and actually building a mass movement in the communities and workplaces.

In Greece we even saw the banks and billionaires attempt to tank the economy to protect their control. A left government faced with such bullyboy tactics would need to disarm them of that weapon of economic sabotage by bringing the banks and other major companies into public ownership and putting them under democratic workers’ control. 

This changes everything

This new era will pose new challenges and opportunities for the socialist left. 

The recent general election was a brush with fate. The fractured socialist left took blows, but kept on our feet, holding onto most of our seats. This shows that a certain base of support for socialist TDs has been built. A Sinn Fein surge squeezed our vote, and we struggled to respond in a positive and principled way. In too many places the left split its vote, costing perhaps two seats and putting a third at risk. We should learn from that, and strengthen the left for the future. RISE’s proposals for a combined left challenge are a good starting point.  

The truth is, this isn’t a bad place to begin. Just before the 2008 crash, Sinn Fein had 5 Dail seats, now it is the largest party in the state. Crisis changes everything. 

Back then the socialist left had no seats. Now on the cusp of another major turn, we are the ones with 5 seats. We are the ones with the ideas to change the world. A desire for a radically different and better world is growing every day.

Let’s make this the decade of that revolution.