Yes, it did all the things that Gilmore said but that was nearly a generation ago now. Labour had a chance after the 1992 election and the Robinson election to become a major party but they blew it big time.

Labour under Spring “jumped the shark” when they put FF back in in 1992. They have never been forgotten for this infamy by the voters. They have never worked out that in broad terms the voters are divided into those who either want a FF government or don’t want want one.

Even wackier still was to allow the Stickies to use Labour as a lifebaot. The post DL/Labour merger party. Was a lot less than the sum of its parts. Taking in a bunch of failed Official Sinn Fein/Official IRA opportunists was hardly a political masterstroke.

The notion that the Senators are the future is baizzare. Lets look at one as an example – Lady Ivana Backik of the Campanile. You’d think that she be better to take her massive 80,000 Euro wage for her TCD 8 hours a week sinicure plus her 60,000 wage for the senate and buy a house in Tallagh and win a seat in the Dail! Not a chance. No Trinity liberal would live in Tallagh! Why should she any way ? Lady Backik of the Campanile knows Labour under the Stickies is stuffed. Anyway one Mary Robinson was a joke – another would be a tragedy.

When history repeats itself it repeats itself as farce!

The political radicalisation currently taking place across Europe is beginning to show itself in Ireland. In the south the free-market ‘neoliberal’ Celtic Tiger has created massive wealth for an elite minority but created poorer public services and an increasing cost of living for the majority while many are still living in poverty. People are fed up and are starting to fight back. Just look at the outrage over the nursing home scandals, the protest over Shell and the tens of thousands who took part in the recent demonstrations against the war, poverty and environmental destruction caused by the neoliberal policies of the G8 leaders like Bush, Blair and Berlusconi.

Public outrage has resulted in support for Fianna Fáil falling dramatically. Instead of galvanising this wave of opposition and offering a real left alternative, the Labour Party and others are busy making pre-electoral pacts with ‘free-market’ Fine Gael. The official trade union movement is wedded in “partnership” to the government and bosses.

Those genuinely committed to building social movements need to unite and create a new left alternative. The votes at recent local and by-elections demonstrate this has a real possibility of success.

Important steps in the process of creating a new left are, as Andy Storey (Afri) has noted: “meetings, discussions, participatory practices, trust and openness”. The Trade Union forum, anti-capitalist mobilisations and local community campaigns amongst others are opportunities to move this forward. Public ‘New left alternative’ forums could be another step.

It was an alliance of the radical Left parties in France that won a majority of votes to defeat the neoliberal EU constitution in France. In an exciting breakthrough in Germany a new radical left party, the Left Party, is winning 10-15% support in polls, mainly from former members and supporters of the German labour party, the SPD.

In Britain it was the newly formed Respect alliance and George Galloway that most vocally opposed Bush and Blair’s war. From Bolivia to France it is the new Left movements that provide a real opposition. Our vision is of a new ‘left alternative’ that is an alliance (on a local and national level) similar to such new alliances emerging across the world like Respect in the UK and Left Block in Portugal.

It can be much more than the existing left. It must also involve those who are currently unrepresented by mainstream politics such as anti-capitalists, migrants, women and community workers. The new left alternative should actively support campaigns that build the confidence of people in local communities and workplaces and aim to politically represent them.

The recent elections in Northern Ireland confirmed that one of the main outcomes of the Good Friday Agreement has been the institutionalisation of communal politics in Northern Irish society. The Socialist and Environmental Alliance (SEA) is building an alternative to that communalism and the acceptance of neo-liberalism. When it comes to the airport, the rail link, poverty wages, water charges or the Iraq war, all the main parties are at one in bowing down before big business.

Left unity and vision brought about the mobilisations against the bin tax and the Iraq war. What was missing was a left alternative to represent the thousands who came out to reject those neo-liberal and imperialist policies. We cannot let this happen again.

People want to fight back. The left can break the stranglehold of the right and an ineffective Labour Party. Now is the time to take bold and imaginative steps and apply unity and vision to create a new left alternative in Ireland.