Jack Eustace is Labour Youth’s Policy & Education Officer, and director of the 2014 Tom Johnson Summer School. Jack is a member of Labour Dublin Rathdown. 

Good evening everyone, I hope you’ve been enjoying your dinner and have had a memorable Tom Johnson so far. Of course, it’s far from over, and we’ll be reconvening tomorrow at the pleasingly lie-in-friendly time of 11:30 for an address by the President of the USI. And then, to compliment and perhaps counterbalance today’s focus on the leadership of our party, we’ll also be hosting a member’s policy forum chaired by Deputy Ged Nash, who I have to say has been one of the most encouraging and enthusiastic TDs towards the work of Labour Youth this year, so we’re delighted to have him here tonight.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to acknowledge two people in the audience who really didn’t have to be here but came along anyway. The first is my mother, Susan, who just two days ago got confirmation that she’s to be awarded a doctorate for her work exploring the human face of the terrible homelessness we see every day on the streets of Dublin. The second is her mother, Carmel, who, if the polling is anything to go by, might just have been the only first-time Labour voter in the country at the last election. So thanks both of you for coming along, you are my chief inspirations in life, and I don’t care how cheesy that sounds.

I’d also like to give my sincerest thanks to the staff of the Portlaoise Heritage Hotel for accommodating us so well, to Shauneen, Kirsi, Ita, Mags and everyone else at Head Office who helped us out so much, and to our speakers and panellists who have been so generous with their time and sharing their insights and wisdom over the weekend. Finally, let me acknowledge the incredible work done by our Youth and Development Officer Marty O’Prey in making this weekend work. He has a bit of a thankless job and he has to work with suspicious characters like me, and the fact he’s still able to make things run so well I think deserves a pretty massive round of applause.

Now, custom has it that I as Director of the Tom Johnson Summer School am to give a bit of a speech, and I guess that’s what you’re listening to right now. But I have to say, there can be a bit of a temptation in politics to give too much emphasis to the person at the top of the room, at the head of the movement. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t take an especial amount of care, or even a certain degree of pride, in the selection of the leaders of our party. Let’s not forget that it is a shockingly democratic process for a modern political party, and although I do know there are quite a few very dedicated members in this room currently unable to vote, nonetheless we shouldn’t lose sight of that. I had a conversation recently enough with an Opposition TD – I won’t tell you in what context, the work of the Policy Officer takes you to some pretty strange places – but, to be honest, it wasn’t so much a conversation as him asking me the same question over and over again. What he was struggling to understand, what he couldn’t quite get his head around, was this; he said to me, “So you’re telling me, your vote” – and the ‘your’ was very much a, who the hell are you, you’re just some guy kinda thing, “your vote,” and here’s the bit he couldn’t deal with, “is worth the same as Pat Rabbitte’s?” And I said yeah, and thought hey, any party where that’s true has got to be doing something right.

It can be all too easy to put up a mental barrier between the leadership and the membership. And that can cut both ways. We can be cosy in our personal space or in our tight-knit groups blaming them for everything that goes wrong, whilst simultaneously buying into the idea that it’s the leadership alone that will or should fix everything, that if we just elect the right person, at the right moment, they’ll pull us back up in the opinion polls and all of a sudden we’ll be doing all these wonderful Labour things and appealing to all the Labour voters again and Labour will,  by the magic of the person at the top of the room,  just be Labour. And I think that’s an extremely dangerous view.

I don’t say that because I doubt the sincerity or ability of the candidates for leader and deputy leader, and I don’t say *that* just because so many of them are looking at me right now. I say that because it is critical that, as a party, and as a wider movement we are more than the person we choose to lead us in the Oireachtas. We have to be more than that, and there is no leader I’ve come across in all of the history of the left, who could act as a substitute for an engaged, critical, constructive membership taking both the responsibility and opportunity being in government affords us.

We often speak of the rhetoric and the mindset of us and them, how we need to stamp it out, how it’s not conducive to our values as an inclusive philosophy. Well, let’s not make the mistake of applying it within our own movement. The leaders of our party are ordinary people and ordinary members the same as all of us. Yes, we give them an important role and yes, we entrust them with a great deal of responsibility and reserve the right to pass judgement on their performance in a way we generally don’t with other individual members. But we make a terrible mistake if we ever allow ourselves to be divested of the shared responsibility that belongs to each and every one of us as Labour members.

I believed, after the last elections, that the time had come for Eamon Gilmore to resign. I didn’t take any pleasure in that conclusion, and I certainly wasn’t happy when I turned on the television and watched him announce he was to vacate his office. He was the person that attracted me to the Labour party. I don’t always tell people that, but it’s the truth. It was Eamon Gilmore, that fiery performer in the Dáil, who first made me think, when I was looking at Irish politics as a kid basically, that you know, there really was something different from what Bertie and Brian and Enda all seemed to offer. So when I watched Eamon Gilmore stand up and step down, and really take what he saw as his share of the responsibility for our devastation, I didn’t get a feeling of joy, or of vindication, or not even of hope for a new, renewed direction. What I felt, silly as it sounds, is guilt.

Not a whole lot. Not an overwhelming sensation. But a definite, real twang of my own responsibility for the measures I believe so alienated us from our supporters. And you might laugh at that, and you might also be right to laugh at that. After all, who am I? What role do I have, what decisions have I made, when have I had to go through that excruciating process of weighing options in a time of limited possibilities? But the answer to the first question is simple. I am a member of the Labour Party. A party is nothing without its membership and I constitute however small a fraction of that, and I have questions to answer just as the party leader did. 

Because I think, and I could of course be wrong, but I do think that we’ve all had a moment over the last three years. Maybe we thought it was a red line, until it came and we crossed it. Some of us found it too much. There are some people not here this weekend who absolutely should have been here, who genuinely felt that the Labour Party had abandoned their principles and their values to such a degree they could no longer count themselves as part its collective identity. Some may return, some may not, I guess we’ll see.  But those of us here in this room today did not walk away. We stayed the course, we fought, we complained, we struggled against aspects of our policy but here we are. Members of the Labour Party. Why?

Well I can’t answer that. We are a movement, yes, but a movement comprised of individuals, and we all have our own reasons and values and breaking points. But I can offer a theory. And it goes deeper than the often-repeated notion that there’s simply nowhere else for most of us to go. It’s tied to two things: what this party can be when it’s at its best, and the spectre of what Irish politics would look like without it. At our best we are the party of the social floor, of the ballot box and never the gun, of the rights of workers and the liberation of women, of thinkers and nonconformists, and of that Ireland that could be for its forgotten children, rather than what it was in the dreams of the nationalist and religious leaders of yesterday.

At our best we are the party of unpopular causes ahead of their time, and of ideas old to the rest of Europe that have yet to find their way to our shores. Yes, our present unpopularity stings, and is a compelling motivator for re-evaluation, but let’s not forget that popularity has never been central to our identity. Michael D Higgins and Jim Larkin and Frank Cluskey all lost their seats in the Dáil. Mary Robinson never won one in the first place. Being on the right side of history is no more a guarantee of electoral success than taking part in a much-maligned coalition. But don’t tell me it doesn’t matter.

At its best, Labour can do wonderful things. And when we do, I feel pride, even if all I did was stand outside the Dáil, or vote for a certain candidate, or attend a march under a Labour banner and keep the idea alive that at our best we are a movement for the disadvantaged, the disaffected, the vulnerable and those that other groups and other parties would see consigned to the sidelines forever. And we delude ourselves if we believe that Fine Gael alone, and much less supported by a Fianna Fáil rump, would have improved at all the lives of the woman whose pregnancy poses a risk to her life, the worker who struggles to get by even on this minimum wage, or the scores of people set to be empowered for the first time in the history of the state by a guarantee of the right to collective bargaining.

But we delude ourselves no less by pretending the Labour Party is owed anything by the parent who is now out of pocket for vital medical expenses they never should have had to pay, by the young person who finds herself doubly punished by the lack of jobs and by a targeted welfare cut, or by the countless others whose daily struggle precludes them from interest in the difference between what constitutes a Labour promise and what was dependent on our achieving an overall majority we never actually sought.

Government is opportunity, even in these difficult times. We have done good, we have done bad, we can do better. But that message must go out beyond the leadership, beyond the cabinet, beyond the parliamentary party and must be taken up by the party membership. Hopeless anger gets us nowhere. Decrying the choice to go into government gets us nowhere. The only thing that can bring this party to its best is you – you as a member, you as a voter, you as a voice for those outside of our tent.

The Labour Party is its best when its membership is united around a central idea, a common goal to improve the lives of our citizens and of our country. I believe that goal is well-articulated in the name of this summer school.  If we’re not demanding equality, then what are we for? Last night, Professor Richard Wilkinson spoke of the pressing need for every aspect of our society to reduce inequalities as a matter of primary urgency. Our own founding principles as a party commit us to a profound reworking of Irish society. If we are not demanding equality, truly placing it squarely as the central reason for our existence as a movement, then I ask again, what are we for?

There has been a growing perception over the last years that the membership has become increasingly excluded from the running of the party. I hope the new leader will do what they can to facilitate a change in this regard, but I say now that it is our job as members to make sure our voices are heard at every level, and not just heard, but acted upon. If you feel Conference is being stage-managed, fight it. If you feel a member-supported policy or motion is being ignored, campaign on it. If you think that something about the way this party operates in government or otherwise needs to be changed, take the opportunity we have, now, as members, and do something about it. Apathy will get us nowhere. Acceptance will get us nowhere. This is a party at a moment in its history where it can do so much. Every month we wait to fulfil one of our aims is another year in impotent opposition where can help no-one and do nothing to bring greater equality to this space in which we all must live.  The one thing we cannot do, as members of the Labour Party and heirs to its proudest traditions, is let this opportunity pass.

You’ve heard a lot from me now, and I can’t blame you if you want to have a drink and relax after what’s been a long and, I hope, stimulating day. But in the spirit of not allowing the opportunities of government to go to waste, I am now going to welcome to the stage two people whose work is breathtaking in its nobility, in its righteousness, and in its unfortunate necessity. When Labour Youth gathered to select the recipient of this year’s Jim Kemmy “Thirst for Justice” Award, there was no shortage of deserving nominees. We listened to pitches, we debated amongst one another, and we took a vote. It was, for certainly the first time in my membership, a unanimous decision. I’m not going to talk to you about the fundamental injustice of the Direct Provision system in Ireland; either you know as much as me, or you’re about to listen to people whose first-hand knowledge puts whatever account I could give in the dark.

All I’ll say is this: there are so many things I hope we as a party do over the next two years. Abolish Zero Hour Contracts. Introduce a living wage. Win the Marriage Equality referendum.  Tackling the housing crisis, start work on universal healthcare, even start examining how we can have a more equitable tax system in this country. But top of any list of things we, as a party set up to advance the needs of the voiceless, can no longer endure is the way in which we allow asylum seekers to be treated in this country. If we do one thing that justifies who we are and what we’re supposed to stand for, it will be radical reform of our system of Direct Provision around the principle of inviolable human dignity.

Everybody, I’d like you to once again give an extraordinarily warm welcome to two people who truly embody what the Jim Kemmy has come to symbolise; Sue Conlon and Simmy Ndlovu of the Irish Refugee Council. Thank you very much.