An Irish Labour Party activist is proposing a new way forward on Northern Ireland

The Irish Labour Party will hold their Annual Conference this weekend. One motion in particular is of interest. Motion 94 proposes that the Irish Labour Party organises in Northern Ireland. The idea has been mooted before, but this motion proposes that the party form a joint entity with the UK Labour Party and that members in N. Ireland would be members of both the Irish and UK parties, similar to the National Union of Students/Union of Students in Ireland (NUS/USI) model. This new joint entity would field candidates in local, Assembly and Westminster elections.

The idea of Labour standing candidates in N. Ireland has previously been discussed at length on LabourList, but this idea adds a new dimension to the debate.

Motion 94 is due to be moved this weekend by Sean Rooney, a native of Co. Donegal who is now studying Law in Dublin. The Glasnevin North Labour Party Branch member says that it was “the achievement of the student movement in the form of NUS/USI bringing the community together in education that inspired the text and theory behind the motion.”

The motion refers to giving voters a choice “beyond the old politics of Orange and Green” and calls on “the Irish Labour Party and the British Labour Party to jointly organise in Northern Ireland.”

The motion is vague, however, on the issue of how this arrangement would work in relation to the SDLP, whose MPs take the Labour Whip at Westminster. It simply states that “the SDLP should be part of any process in which the Labour Party begins to organise in the North of Ireland.” Indeed, Rooney asserts that one of the reasons why Labour should organise in N. Ireland is the SDLP’s  “inability to reach across the divide as a result of its nationalist heritage.”

But the history of Labour politics in N. Ireland identifies that it is not only the unionist community who have felt alienated from the movement. The Northern Ireland Labour Party (NILP) operated in one form or another until from 1924 until 1987, and they were represented at Westminster when Jack Beattie won the Belfast West by-election in 1943. But the NILP lost much of its support in nationalist areas when it endorsed a unionist position in 1949. Former NILP members Ivan Cooper and Paddy Devlin went on to become founder members of the SDLP in August 1970. Born out of the Civil Rights Movement, the SDLP emerged because no other party was adequately challenging the injustice of the Stormont Parliament’s allocation of housing and government jobs and gerrymandering of electoral wards to ensure a unionist majority. Nevertheless, the SDLP’s nationalist stance understandably means that they have attracted little support in the unionist community, even from those who would support a centre-left party in any other political circumstances.

It is much too simplistic to expect communal voting behaviour to wither away just because the name Labour appears on the ballot paper. So what could the arrangement set out in Motion 94 actually hope to achieve? At the very least, a joint arrangement between the UK and Irish Labour Party could help open up a space for progressive, non-sectarian centre-left politics in N. Ireland. But a move that simply divides the centre-left vote is pointless. Labour should not break its historic connection with the SDLP. There is nothing to be gained by standing against your political allies. A dialogue between the SDLP, the Irish Labour Party and the UK Labour Party on a new approach would be a very exciting prospect.