Party anthem:For years, political parties have adopted upbeat, optimistic songs, from Whitney Houston to Tina Turner, to end their conferences. However, the Labour Party has decided that the old numbers are best.
On Saturday, Labour delegates in Wexford, to much acclaim, adopted the anthem of the working class, The Red Flag, written by Irishman Jim Connell in London in 1889, as the party's song.
Former British prime minister Tony Blair hated it and managed until 2003 to keep it off his conference agenda, fearing it did not chime with the New Labour creed.
From now on, the Irish Labour Party will sing the first verse and chorus of the anthem, which has been sung from Red Square to Havana, at the end of conferences:
"The people's flag is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead.
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, Their hearts' blood dyed its ev'ry fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high.
Within its shade we'll live and die,
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the red flag flying here."
Leading the calls, Dermot Looney from Greenhills, Dublin, said The Red Flag would "bind us together - proud to be Left, proud to be Labour".
While The Red Flag is back at the centre of Irish politics, Labour, perhaps in tune with the coalition-minded politics of the day, is divided over the air to which it should be sung.
Though usually sung to the rather mournful German carol O Tannenbaum, Connell had wanted it sung to the air of the livelier The White Cockade, as some Labour supporters want.
Sticking to the Tannenbaum version, Labour members sang all of the verses, though it must surely hope the sentiments of the last verse will not mirror the party's future.
"With heads uncovered swear we all,
To bear it onward till we fall.
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim, This song shall be our parting hymn."
