Irish Labour considers its role in the North

Jeremy Corbyn MP was invited to speak at the Irish Labour Party's Tom Johnson Summer School at the weekend, to talk on the subject "21st Century Socialism: What does it look like and how can we get it?" he was joined on the platform by Irish Labour TD and former Workers Party TD Eamon Gilmore. Corbyn's presence on the platform to discuss the way forward for the left is a welcome step by the leadership of the Irish Labour Party given his role as the leading Parliamentarian opposing the US imperialist interventions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, but also his long-standing solidarity with Cuba and more recently with Venezuela.

However he was not asked to speak on the British occupation of the north of Ireland, given his differing views from the current Irish Labour Party project and it is interesting to note the platform on the "way forward for the left in the north of Ireland". The Chair of the Northern Ireland Labour Forum, Mark Langhammer, who was also co-opted on to the Irish Labour Party NEC in 2005, was the main speaker while another was the SWP member and candidate in the recent north's Assembly elections, Sean Mitchell.
Unfortunately the north's largest left party, Sinn Fein was not invited to send a representative and perhaps more surprisingly, neither was Irish Labour's sister party, the SDLP. The inclusion of the SWP gave the event some useful left cover but failed to engage with the mass force of the left in the north.

Langhammer's role is interesting. He is Chair of the Northern Ireland Labour Forum and is quoted on the Irish Labour Party's website as stating "We will be bringing a resolution to Labour's Wexford Conference. The resolution will task the party with registering with the Electoral Commission as a political party in Northern Ireland" in order to contest - in the short term - local elections.

Langhammer played a leading role in drawing up the Irish Labour Party's 2006 statement on the north of Ireland that included "that In accordance with our view that our society is not and never will be exclusively British or Irish, we take the view that Northern Ireland should be part of both the UK and Ireland and that political structures should be established accordingly...In any future referendum on the border issue, as envisaged by the Belfast Agreement, in addition to the highly divisive and mutually exclusive British or Irish options, we will actively seek to have a third 'part of both' option included."

As part of this project, the statement also says that "The NI Labour Forum is also seeking a formal structural relationship with the British Labour Party, in the spirit of the proposal below." The inability of Irish Labour to challenge the role of British colonialism in the north of Ireland risks any candidates they see falling between the cracks and failing to make any advances for the left in Ireland. Their refusal to engage with other major left forces, whilst tokenistically using hard-left cover, is the surest sign of the failing of their policy.