One of the more peculiar features of contemporary Ireland’s political landscape is the way a left leaning outlook has been baked into virtually all political discourse over the last 30 years or so.
Accordingly, when Official Ireland looks out from its political bunker these days it doesn’t view the world from the viewpoint of the political centre; it does so from a broadly left of centre viewpoint. This is now ingrained not just in Irish political discourse but in political commentary in general.
Key to this worldview has been the role of a largely privileged and Dublin-centric demographic who have been driving much of Ireland’s political narrative over the last 30 years. This is Ireland’s bourgeoise working class, unmistakeably privileged yet revelling in identifying with the working class and any number of leftist causes.
This was exemplified by the recent student blockade and encampment in the grounds of Dublin’s Trinity College. Not for the first time, we had the spectacle of student activists from some of Dublin’s more affluent suburbs getting to parade their working class credentials by camping out in solidarity with Palestine.
Today, the grown-up version of these Trinity protestors can be found in the ranks of Ireland’s establishment left. They include people like Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald, Labour leader Ivana Bacik and PBP’s Paul Murphy to mention a few. Far from having working class roots, many are socially privileged and include the alumni of some of Ireland’s most exclusive private schools.
Not that social privilege should preclude anyone from partaking in politics. However, the irony of socially privileged people building political careers on equality, of all things, does need to be pointed out. Indeed, it would appear that the more privileged this political demographic becomes the more obsessed it becomes with the abstract ideal of equality.
The greatest achievement of Ireland’s bourgeoise working class surely has to be the manner in which it has dragged the centre in Irish politics to the left resulting in the de facto ideological capture of parties like Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. What were once clearly right of centre political parties are today little more than versions of the Labour Party promoting broadly left of centre policies. Indeed, it’s fair to say that both Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are now to the left of even the British Labour Party.
Bear in mind the actual record of Fine Gael who have had control over Finance for most of the last 13 years. With State spending expected to hit a record €110bn in 2024, it’s clear that Fine Gael is now fully committed to a socialist-type vision of an expanded state.
This is not the behaviour of right wing or even centre right political parties but of parties who have bought in totally to the leftist belief in an enlarged super state. Neither can their social policies on abortion, gender ideology and immigration be termed right wing or conservative in any meaningful way.
The other thing about Ireland’s bourgeoise working class is that they have an idealized view of the left and all things relating to socialism. Many are the children of Ireland’s Boomer generation so it’s hardly surprising that they grew up with a rose-tinted view of socialism.
That idealization involved not just T-shirts with socialist legends like Che Guevera and Fidel Castro, it also required adhering to the rule that no one talk about the economic carnage or the wilful abuse of human rights associated with their icons.
It is interesting to observe this political demographic’s view of what might be termed Ireland’s ‘actual’ working class as opposed to their own glorified view of themselves as some sort of working class. This is evident in the portrayal of ongoing protests in working class areas over the imposition of asylum seekers on their areas.
Initially, the view was that such protests were being orchestrated from outside by the mythical far-right. The view it presented of people in places like East Wall, Roscrea and Newtownmountkennedy was clear – the working class are simple-minded folk who, unlike us bourgeoise working class, are prone to manipulation and need to be saved from their own feeble mindedness.
As the protests have grown and the nonsense of that trope has collapsed, it has been replaced by a new narrative. This is the narrative that is now evident on social media in the face of such local protests – that the protestors are not only unemployed layabouts and spongers but racists, fascists, homophobes and far right extremists as well.
So much for the idealization of the working class! When push comes to shove, it seems class really does count especially when Ireland’s quality get to look down their noses at working people and call them names.
The recent review by the Sinn Fein leadership of their disastrous electoral results south of the border contains more than a hint of an acknowledgement that they may well be seriously out of step with the same actual working class on issues like immigration.
The thing about Ireland’s well-heeled social activists is that they are obsessed with political fashion trends as much as politics. If their Boomer parents were taken with things like T-shirts of people like Che Guevera and Fidel Castro then their children are also obsessed with the notion of the political fashion statement.
These days taking the knee for America’s Black Lives Matter movement or donning a keffiyeh or Repeal T-shirt are the sort of political fashion statements intended to impress your friends as much as they are intended on making a coherent political statement on anything.
In talking about Ireland’s bourgeoise working class, the reference to political royalty is indeed entirely appropriate. For all the talk about equality, it’s clear that these people in fact see themselves as superior to Ireland’s actual working class.
Some things, it seems, never change.