Keaveney u-turn on party politics

GALWAY East has been left without a Labour Party representative at Government level, following last week’s resignation from the party of former Labour Deputy and party chair, Colm Keaveney. The deputy will continue to serve in the Dáil as an independent TD for the Galway East constituency.

Less than a week before his resignation from the Labour Party, a post remained on www.colmkeaveney.ie encouraging those signalling their intent to resign from the party to “stick with it” and encouraged those who had already left to “rejoin”.

The deputy’s constituency office confirmed this was a statement issued by Deputy Keaveney. However, a spokesperson stated this was posted last year and that it represented a view of Deputy Keaveney at that time. He stated the website “hasn’t been updated in quite a while”.

The website is currently down but The Clare Champion was able to access the information, which remained on the site up until June 20, 2013, just six days before the deputy announced his resignation from the party.

In the welcome address on the site, Deputy Keaveney stated, “I have heard from many people that they are disgusted with politics and are turning away from it. Many have stated their intent to resign from their parties. I would encourage such people not to turn away but to strengthen their resolve, stick with it and work from within in order to influence change… A healthy democracy needs citizens to be engaged in the political process and membership and involvement in a political party is certainly one way of meeting that need.”

The statement continued by addressing former Labour members who had resigned. “I ask that they reconsider and rejoin. I ask that they engage and seek to work from within to effect change, along with all of our colleagues. I appeal to people in my constituency of Galway East to join Labour and to work with me and other local members to bring about change working from the local to the national,” he said.

The statement appeared “on the front of his website and it was placed there at some point in the last year. It was removed following his resignation,” a spokesperson at the deputy’s constituency office confirmed.

Deputy Keaveney said he had made “great attempts to reconcile the resignation of Róisín Shorthall” during what “was a turbulent and difficult time” and that it was a calming influence to issue a positive statement to the effect of what appeared on his website.

At that time, he felt he “was continuing on with effecting change in policy and when it came to last year’s budget, I was fully convinced that the Government would honour its commitment around child benefit. I got increasingly alarmed around the Social Welfare Bill and I voted against it. That put me in a difficult position in the party.

“Being a member of a political party, in my view, is a two-way relationship and when one side of that relationship is dysfunctional, like any relationship, it becomes difficult for somebody and the honourable thing to do is to move on. I tried to effect change internally in the party and unfortunately it became very clear my views were unwelcome. There’s a question whether I left the Labour Party or the Labour Party left me. That’s a question for another day and only history will tell that,” he added.

At the time of writing that statement, he did not believe he would ever resign from the party and he addressed that by saying, “I never planned to. I was dedicated to the party. I’m not interested in saying that we should race ahead and leave people behind. A day is a long time in politics. I attempted to effect change. I approached the chair of the party with my best foot forward. I was unwelcome by the leadership. They didn’t want my views represented on the executive. The views I hold dear are the ones I made prior to the last general election. I’m not one of those politicians who lie before a election. I’d rather tell the truth before an election and lose a seat than lie and win a seat. I have my own value system on that. If Labour ever meant anything in politics, it meant taking people in from the fringes of society who were marginalised and I didn’t want to continue to be part of a charade that marginalised people,” he said.

Asked if he is worried about his seat in the next general election, Deputy Keaveney said, “Not at all. I’m not one of these politicians that’s paralysed by the next general election”. He added that he still loves the job and has not “lost sight of the fact that the seat belongs to the people of East Galway”.

“My first constitutional obligation is to my constituents and I felt the best way that I could maintain the integrity of that obligation was to continue to stand for what I said before the election,” he concluded.