Toward a National Populist programme for a future Ireland
Laying out the populist programme of economics for the future of Irish policy making.
Blueprints for an independent Ireland1
It is crucial that those who critique modern Neoliberal Ireland actually have an alternative political and economic programme of social policy if they are to position themselves as some kind of opposition. People must be asking themselves: are they merely patriotic liberals who are uncomfortable with the excessiveness of Irish progressivism?—or are they genuinely economic and political populists?
Developing a native Irish manufacturing industry
‘Whether those same manufactures which England imports from other countries may not be admitted from Ireland? And, if so, whether lace, carpets, and tapestry, three considerable articles of English importation, might not find encouragement in Ireland? And whether an academy for design might not greatly conduce to the perfecting those manufactures among us?’—George Berkeley. The Querist.2
‘Every nation, with a view to those great objects, ought to endeavour to possess within itself all the essentials of national supply. These comprise the means of Subsistence, habitation, clothing, and defence.’—Hamilton, Report on the Subject of Manufactures, 1791.
Ireland is far too dependent on foreign direct investment, as well as a fake economy of the ‘service’ sector. Gone are the days of old where we proudly made great physical products in this country, for this country—other than the arguably native agriculture industry. Ask anyone from older generations about our old clothes brands, from Clarkes shoes and the far older Linen trade which was famous across the continent. With the death of de Valera and ‘old Fianna Fáil’ came the death of the Irish-Ireland ideal of having a predominantly Irish-made and produced goods in our shops and markets. We must resurrect this if Ireland is to be truly self-sufficient and wealthy once again.
Historically, the great success stories of economic miracles all came from nations that took time to build-up strong self-sufficient export-oriented manufacturing and industrial sectors. To name a few examples from the 19th Century, one need only look at Lincoln’s American System, Bismarck’s Marriage of Iron and Rye and the Japanese Meji Restoration’s ‘kokueki’ strategy respectively to see this bear weight. What defines these, any many other examples, is what the great political scientist Chalmers Johnson coined as the ‘developmental state’, distinct from top-down state planning, as well as free-market globalisation.
Of course, this was simply the traditional policy which the Easter Rising and early Sinn Féin, as well as early-Twentieth Century Fianna Fail was based on. Stemming from the influence of Friedrich List over Arthur Griffith, the movement heavily prioritised the Irish-Ireland ideal not only in culture (through Conradh na Gaeilge, the GAA, etc) but also in economics. The goal was to revive the Irish Linen industry as well as developing a strong state-supported ‘Buy Irish’ mentality and campaign, to foster local investment and initiative. Irish people were to be employed by Irish businesses, producing Irish goods for Irish consumers as well as exporting abroad. In the eyes of Griffith, this would simply put Irish business on a level playing ground:
‘Protection does not mean the exclusion of foreign competition - it means rendering the native manufacturer equal to meeting foreign competition’.3
Although this may seem like an ancient dream, there is no reason Ireland cannot move toward being a protectionist powerhouse once again. Much has been made about superpowers like Trump’s United States and the post-Dengist CCP embracing tariffs, state-subsidised infant industries and overall developmentalism, but it’s important to note how useful this strategy has been for small states also. Two examples would suffice: 1) Salazar’s Estado Novo, which managed to build-up a self-sufficient textile and processing industry through large state-backed conglomerates, establishing a high-wage and trade union-based economy; as well as 2) Park Chung Hee’s South Korea which relied on the Chaebol system to develop a steel and tech manufacturing sector culminating in Samsung and Hyundai.
The most relevant example for Ireland however, in my view, is that of the corporatist-nationalist Finland of the mid-20th Century. In a sort of mirror-image of what could have been Ireland, the newly independent Finnish state of about 5 million people managed to transition from being an agrarian backwater, synonymous with the image of neglect from neighbour empires, to being a highly-advanced tech-driven economy through a targeted campaign of R&D funding and protectionism — creating the global powerhouse of Nokia. Without the CIA support of Park in South Korea, nor the imperial wealth of Salazar, the successive regimes of Paasikivi and Kekkonen demonstrate that a small country can pursue strategic national developmentalism.
In looking for the future, some policy ideas for a future protectionist Ireland could be:
Investing in and subsidising a native state-backed Irish tech sector, particularly in AI, with the goal of establishing an Irish equivalent to Nokia or Samsung.
Fostering a new ‘Buy-Irish’ campaign for Irish-made products, exploring tariffs on imports, particularly in foods.
Re-developing a protected textile industry, particularly in linen manufacturing through patents and tariffs on imports.
Reclaiming sovereignty over our whole island
‘A system of society in which the workshops, factories, docks, railways, shipyards, &c., shall be owned by the nation, but administered by the Industrial Unions of the respective industries…Such a system would, we believe, realise for Ireland the most radiant hopes of all her heroes and martyrs.’—James Connolly, The Re-Conquest of Ireland.4
‘Passed in 2009, the constitution elevated symbols of indigenous identity and enshrined both the rights of ‘Mother Earth’ and sovereignty over natural resources in law. The latter effectively strengthened the position of the state oil company and eventually the state mining corporation.’5
Of course, the issues for Ireland pursuing these policies of tariff protection, state-investment in native industries and subsidies begin when one considers our precarious lack of sovereignty. Not only is our economy beholden to foreign direct investors, but much of much of the physical island itself—saying nothing of the North—is owned and speculated on by transnational Capital as well as global neoliberal institutions. This becomes particularly clear in the case of forestries and fisheries sectors, where the great natural produce of our island is being sold to the highest foreign bidder, whether the EU or otherwise, while the nation sees no benefit from it, forced to import shoddier products from abroad.
In looking at examples of reclaiming sovereignty over one’s natural resources, it goes without saying this policy will be markedly more radical than protectionism—where many imperial states already controlled their own territories. Two examples that come to mind: 1) Singapore was able to nationalise land in the 1960s, limiting the control by foreign speculators and vultures over property, which set the stage for a vast public work building scheme; and 2) Finland was able to focus on limiting foreign ownership over their forests, and in building up a strong saw-mill sector they managed to utilise their luscious forests to fund the economy spoken of before.
For reclaiming sovereignty over our natural resources, whether in land or our fisheries and forestries sectors, I would say the best case example we should aspire to is that of Iceland, who managed to successfully free themselves from Britain’s claws over their waters during the ‘Cod Wars’. With overfishing of the immediate area surrounding the island hurting their domestic economy, successive protectionist governments managed to fight to expand Iceland’s fishing zone from 4 to 200 nautical miles, setting a now global standard. With direct physical altercations from the superpower of Britain, as well as pressure from EEC countries, Iceland forged a modern example of state sovereignty.
Historically we already have the corollary of the impressive Hydro-Electric Scheme, as well as a wide variety of policy ideas from Ireland’s great political and social thinkers. Having the state reclaim the resources of this nation is a very old, Irish idea. If Ireland was able to successfully fight for ownership over its own waters, land and resources, we would be in a far more practical scenario for the forging of an independent, native and manufacturing economy. If we control our own resources we are far closer to self-sufficiency.
This concept really came to the fore in the 19th Century, where Irish-Irelanders began to realise the centrality of emphasising the economic reconquest of the nation’s resources, as a central pillar along with the cultural and political revival of the Gael. As Connolly pointed out ‘The Gaelic Leaguer realises that capitalism did more in one century to destroy the tongue of the Gael than the sword of the Saxon did in six’6 If the resources of the country are in foreign hands, we can wave away any dream of freedom before the people of Ireland win them back. The Young Irelanders understood this better than anyone, as Mitchel famously cried:
‘Ireland for the Irish means primarily and mainly, not 'Irishmen for Irish offices,' not political ameliorations, not 'assimilation to English franchises'—patient Heaven! no;—it means, first, Irishmen fixed upon Irish ground, and growing there, occupying the island like trees in a living forest with roots stretching as far towards Tartarus as their heads lift themselves towards the clouds.’7
If one does not support Irish land in Irish hands, that the people of Ireland own the property, rivers and wealth of the island, then they are not an Irish nationalist, plain and simple.
From this, we can propose:
Ireland renegotiate its relationship with EU countries over our fisheries sector.
Strive to reduce foreign ownership of Irish forests, with an investment in a modernised power grid.
Nationalise land, ban non-EU foreign ownership and start to build vast social housing blocs.
Establishing financial independence from global special interests
‘Because banks are today an essential tool of the capitalist system and of a mode of production that is devastating our planet and grabbing its resources, creating wars and impoverishment, eroding, little by little, social rights and attacking democratic institutions and practices, it is essential to take control of them so that they become tools placed at the service of the greater number of people.’—Fazi, Reclaiming the State.8
‘Whether both government and people would not in the event be gainers by a national bank? And whether anything but wrong conceptions of its nature can make those that wish well to either averse from it?’—Berkeley’s Querist.9
Coming to the final piece of the puzzle, there is the crisis of the shadow control of multinational finance over Irish credit and banking. It is conceivable a protectionist government could foster native industry in Ireland, developing a strong local and national manufacturing sector; it is conceivable we could reclaim control over own island—what would make this all in vain is if we do not have some form of monetary independence from the ruling neoliberal banking cartels of the European Central Bank as well as the IMF and Dollar-led order. If the powers that be control our purse strings, all national and economic investments could be whisked away by the click of a button.
Achieving monetary independence, especially in the current system is easily the most difficult of our ideas discussed here, but it is certainly not without historical precedent. In the post-war order, not only was the strict control of interest rates and the devaluing of national currencies common practice, but outright nationalisation of banks was established as soon as peace broke out in 1940s Europe by Clement Attlee’s Britain as well as De Gaulle’s France. Similarly, Iceland was able to fully nationalise their main banks in response to their failing during the 2008 Financial Crisis. While these banks weren’t so much used to finance a grand national-protectionist project that I would advocate, it is a worthwhile example to demonstrate the viability of national banking as an alternative to the foreign finance controlled system.
Two other examples would be that of the miracles of the Asian Tigers. For starters, Japan has experimented with national banking, as well as outright overt monetary financing—flippantly referred to as ‘money printing’—since their miraculous escape from the Great Depression under Takahashi Korekiyo. In the post-war period, the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) tightly controlled the country’s financial markets, limiting and regulating foreign exchange as well as wielding commercial banks to the benefit of the state’s infrastructure projects. Park Chung Hee’s South Korea employed very similar policies in establishing its Five Year Plans.
The concept of national banks goes back in Ireland a long time, a uniquely long time in fact. Firstly, there is the radically forward-thinking national protectionist economic philosophy of Bishop George Berkeley, laid out in the 1736 ‘Querist’, where national banking was put forward as the central funding method behind a proto-Keynesian policy of vast infrastructure development. While neglected at the time, Berkeley’s treatise inaugurated a tradition in the historiography of Irish economic patriotism. First, Homer Ruler Isaac Butt paid homage to it with his The Irish Querist published about a century after the original work, and then Republican Bulmer Hobson, a founding member of the Irish Volunteers, published The New Querist in 1933, almost two hundred years after Berkeley.
Consistently, the principle applied here is whether the currency, credit and rate of exchange for Ireland can be left up to private Banks, run by foreigners, the British and their lackeys. Responding to the stock bubbles of his day, Berkley saw such rampant speculation and waste of wealth and thought through a public bank ‘Whether the currency of a credit so well secured would not be of great advantage to our trade and manufactures?’.10 A point which was repeated by famed Labour nationalist Fr. Alfred O’Rahilly during the 1930s debates over the Free State inheriting a British-aligned Central Bank (parodied in the image above seen over this heading).11 As Hobson explains, the goal would be redirect the tremendous wealth of the country into the actual public good and productivity of social policy:
‘The government acting as a central bank should issue the money to local authorities for housing, and the money would be repaid out of the sale of the houses or rents from them. The number of houses built should depend on the natural limit imposed by materials and labour available, and not by the artificial limit of how local authorities could float loans.’12
With a classic work in this tradition outlined once every century of Irish patriots, we are soon due the publication of the 21st Century Irish Querist. Before that point is achieved, the wider ramifications and strategy behind an independent Ireland on the world stage must be considered.
For anti-establishment figures in Ireland today, the future diplomacy and geopolitical strategy that could help Ireland in this regard would necessitate a reconsidering of our current NATO-aligned establishment. With the development of the BRICS alliance, as well as Multipolarity becoming a ever-increasing reality, one wonders what a multifaceted approach to non-Western forces could look like for Irish finance. Could a national populist Ireland pursue a programme of economic development better within a world of friendly diplomacy those outside of the SWIFT monetary system? These are questions which need to be asked.
While direct policy proposals are perhaps less obvious in this category, as it is naturally more long-term, those interest in alternative policy proposals should consider these:
Begin an openness to non-Eurodollar trade, with countries outside of the SWIFT-led Western system.
Tackle the influence of Shadow Banks in Ireland, insuring transparency.
Build a research council on the viability of National Banking, and local community bank models.
The dream of a future independent Ireland
Of course not all of these things can be achieved immediately, but while the Neoliberal Dublin regime rules for the next 5 years it is vital that those on the anti-establishment, whether traditionalist republicans, populists, or Irish-Irelanders from all stripes, begin to develop an alternative policy framework for a future Ireland. Essentially, the alternative economic system to what got Ireland in this situation—that of Progressive Neoliberalism—must be fully fleshed out. This is merely the beginning of this process.
Once we have a blueprint, an ideal to strive for, we can then begin to iron out the details. In my view, the heart of any populist Irish political programme must contain three essentials principles: 1) revival of Irish industry, 2) reconquest of our land from foreign Capital and 3) the goal of financial independence from the debt-based international banking system.
With these in mind we could begin to imagine a self-sufficient nation, which stands proudly on the productive industry of a revived native linen and tech trade. We could imagine a land which was fully owned by the people who live on it, with vast housing projects and advanced transport, built for and by the Irish nation, not international speculators. If we are brave enough, we could even imagine an Ireland which breaks free from the bonds of financial Capitalism and its international shadow banks, paving the way for true independence for the rest of the world’s enslaved nations currently enchained by debt-slavery.
In short, we could imagine a free Ireland.
Qu. 68.
Sinn Féin Policy, November 28, 1905.
Connolly, p. 91.
Seusse, p. 276.
Ibid, p. 94.
John Mitchel, United Irishman, 12 February, 1848.
Fazi, p. 258.
Qu. 95.
Qu. 205.
‘Can the Central Bank (as in England) control the money- creating activities of the banks, their charges or their rate of interest? No. Can it (as in England) 'lend' direct to the State? No.’—quoted in II: Public Figure by J. Anthony Gaughan, p. 365.
Hobson, The New Querist, p. 117.