Grim choice fol Irish voters

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Conference open to Labour Committee om Palestine members, delegates from affiliated organisations, an non-voting observers. Details from the secretary, 28 Carlton Mansions, Holmleigh Rd, London N16. Saturday November 20, 1pm to 5pm at Brixton Town Hall, Acre Lane, London SW2. THAT the 26 Counties is to have its third general election is 18 months came as no surprise to anybody in Ireland.

The Fianna Fail government led by Charles J Haughey had depended on the support of the three Workers' Party (ex Official Sinn Fein) deputies and of "independent' Dublin TD [MP] Tony Gregory. The latter was openly and publ icly bought, to the tune of many millions of pounds of public spending in Gregory's constituency.

Economic

The death of one Fianna Fail deputy, and the incapacitating illness of another, plus the Workers' Party's withdrawal of support for a government intent un a savagely stringent and services-cutting* economic policy, brought Haughey's government down.

• The choice before the Irish electors is a grim one. Fianna Fail is a bourgeois party, with a somewhat more nationalist stance than the other main bourgeois party, Fine Gael. Both are committed to economic cutback policies to try to get the 26 Counties out of its economic mess. Neither even pretends that it will do anything about mass unemployment.

Haughey is campaigning on the issue of 'trust', and his opponent, Fine Gael leader Garret Fitzgerald, hopes to trap votes with the cry for 'credibility'.

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Haughey says he doesn't 'trust Fitzgerald to take steps to amend opposition to abortion into the Irish constitution. A Fitzgerald government would probably depend on Labour votes, and the Labour Party has criticised the proposal.

The Irish SPUC exists in a society where abortion is illegal (i.e. exported to Britain), but it has bad immense success with the pre-emptive demand that the constitution be amended so that only a referendum could ever legalise abortion. All the Protestant churches in the 26 Counties have denounced the proposal as 'sectarian', that is, based on Catholic social doctrine - but to no avail.

Haughey has set the necessary machinery motion. "Liberal' Fitzgerald responds to Haughey's claim that he cannot be trusted with the promise to bring about the amendment by March next year.

Discipline

Fianna Fail enters the election in a terrible state.

It is traditionally a party of professionals. Originating from the defeated Republicans of the civil war - men and women who were, in a completely serious if not in a profoundly social sense, revolutionaries - it has always had a harsh discipline and regimented quality.

This has been shattered in the last three years, since the forced resignation of Jack Lynch. The ill deputy is Jim Gibbons, who gave evidence against Haughey" at his trial in 1970 to allegedly running guns for the Northern Catholics.

Either Haughey lied at the trial, in which he was acquitted, or Gibbons did. Gibbons' severe heart attack may have been brought on by the fact that he was recently assaulted at the Parliament building after a heated leadership-crisis meeting of Fianna Fail.

At least half of Fianna Fail loathes Haughey. If he loses the election, he is done for politically.

The Labour Party too is in a bad position. Its former leader, Michael O'Leary, has just defected to Fine Gael. Taking the logic of coalition politics seriously, he decided that, given his commitment to a coalition government dominated by Fine Gael, he might as well join the party.

At the Labour Party's recent Galway conference, the coalition policy was defeated only in the sense that the party refused a prior commitment to it. It will fight the election on its own policies, and then negotiate coalition if that is an option. A delegate conference of the Party will decide."

O'Leary's replacement as leader is Dick Spring, who defeated party chairman Miehael D. Higgins (candidate of the left and anti-coalition forces) by 12 votes to 2 among the Labour TDs.

Inherited

Spring is a crystallised representative of a certain type of Irish politician. 32 years old, he inherited a sate rural seat trom his father 18 months ago, his father having held it for 38 years. People who inherit seats from fathers or husbands are no rarity in Dail Eireann.

Spring is a former Irish rugby international. Of the 14 Labour Party seats, 10

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