Dominic's Blog

Time for us in Labour to say sorry - changing Brendan won't make a difference The recent opinion polls suggest that the Labour Party is only enjoying the support of 1 in every 20 voters. The polls have led to calls from some of our Councillors for a change of Leadership. I don't think that's what we need. I think the issue is with the party, not the Leader. We all remember how the 2016 Irish general election was a bleak one for the Irish Labour Party. Of its thirty three outgoing TDs, only seven were re-elected to the new Dail. The scale of the result was seismic with long-standing TDs such as Joe Costello and Emmet Stagg removed from what were considered safe Labour seats. Newer TDs, such as myself, were badly beaten, sometimes by candidates with no track record of any political involvement or philosophy whatsoever. The reason for the drastic change in the fortunes of the party will be debated for years. I’ll give my own thoughts, for what they’re worth.

The International Affairs Unit of the Labour Party (IAU) hosted a seminar in Drogheda in early July to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. As Chair of the IAU I organised and chaired the event, and welcomed speakers including Party Leader Brendan Howlin, Senator Gerald Nash and Councillor Deirdre Kingston, as well as Colin McGrath MLA, Ethel Buckley of SIPTU and Professor Yvonne Galligan of QUB. The IAU felt that it was important to mark the 50 th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement. 1968 saw some of key events of the last century, which have shaped the last fifty years. These worldwide events included the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in the US, the Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia and the Student Protests in Paris. Closer to home we saw the start of the Civil Rights demonstrations in Northern Ireland, which called for equality in relation to housing provision. The world of that time was alive