Campaign Notebook, Feb 14 1982

Des O'Malley was choosing his words the way Steve Davis choooses the angle off the side cushion into the corner pocket. Very carefully, deliberately.

"... and, eh , I feel that, eh, if we didn't complete the project, eh, that, eh, the money that's already spent would . . . would be wasted . . . in those circumstances."

There were eleven front-bench Fianna Failers lined up along the table in the Burlington. One microphone. The ground rules were well workeddout. The General Secretary of Fianna Fail, Frank Wall, had a list of seating arrangements and told all the TDs where they would be positioned at the long table. Press Officer Tony FitzzPatrick told the assembled journalists that, HMr. Haughey will be chairing the conference, so please address all questions to him."

And Charlie had the microphone, lending it out at his discretion, decidding who should answer what, when, and for how long.

As Des O'Malley picked his way through the mine-field around Knock Airport, Charlie's hand began to move along the table, an inch at a time, past Martin O'Donoghue. Charlie had just given a firm commitment to finishing the building of the airport and O'Mallley, who thinks that the project should never have been started, was trying to answer a question on the issue without selling himself out, but without pubblicly disagreeing with his leader.

Charlie's hand was now poised only inches from the microphone and as O'Malley neared the end of the senntence the hand came up and wooosh!, the microphone was whipped away.

But ... but ...

Another question on the airport, this time to Martin O'Donoghue, and Charlie had to again concede possesssion of the microphone. Did Martin agree that Knock airport was needed on economic, social and infrastructural grounds, as his leader had said?

As Martin began speaking Charlie muttered something to him, the words inaudible in the big room. But the RTE microphone picked them up and a video recording of the little scene reeveals clearly what Charlie said.

"Well," said Martin, "the position I would see ... "

"Say yes!, "muttered Charlie.

" ... is that the commitments made by Irish governments should be honnoured."

Martin, his strings well and truly pulled, never did get to say if he belieeves there are good economic grounds for building Knock Airport.

The Fine Gael bus was pulling into the village square when Garret FitzGerald hauled himself to his feet and said, "And this is ... ?"

Frank McDermott, Fine Gael candiidate for Meath, smiled; "Oldcastle!," his home ground.

"That's what I thought it was!," said FitzGerald, who had looked like he wasn't too sure what day it was.

The bus was behind schedule. Seveeral more stops before swinging back down to Dublin. The Fine Gaelers blitzed Meath in one morning, hitting the towns and villages with ten and fifteen-minute visits, fanning out through the streets and shopping centtres like they were marines taking Guadalcanal

Ashbourne, Navan, Kells - where a group of local workers protest that their jobs are threatened by the propoosal to put V AT on clothing and foottwear. FitzGerald shakes hands with them, the encounter is friendly enough, . but as the bus pulls away the workers hold their placards against the window. Keep our factories open.

Now it's Oldcastle and there really isn't time for a speech - except that there are all these people waiting for the bus and the local Garda sergeant is saluting. Time is pressing and it should be just the usual quick wave and handdshake - but a local supporter has arr-

anged for tea and sandwiches from a hotel.

"If we're staying, you might as well say something," says a hard-pressed aide. "We'll skip the speech in Castleepollard. Is this Frank's country ... ? Frank, come up here and introduce the Taoiseach."

So the snacks are distributed while FitzGerald stands at the door of the bus and complains about Fianna Fail. On a table in the bus there's a briefing for speeches, several paragraphs pointting out the issues to be emphasised. Stress borrowing, says the first heading.

" ... even to find out what they had spent - because of the way they did it - was incredibly difficult ... "

FitzGerald ends by telling the crowd that they should spread the vote in order to keep Fianna Fail down to two seats, that there's a real possibility of three. He names the canndidates, Frank McDermott, John Farrrelly and John Bruton.

There had been it subtle change since the day started. At the first stop, in Ashbourne, FitzGerald told the crowd that their task was to hold onto the two seats Fine Gael had, Bruton's and Farrelly's - "we can gain ground elsewhere." Poor Frank McDermott, the third candidate, shuffling his elecction cards and standing a couple of feet .away from the party leader, who was making it plain that Frank is just running for the exercise.

John Bruton, standing at the botttom of the bus steps, decided some tact was called for. He folded an elecction card so that his name and John Farrelly's were concealed and held the card up to FitzGerald with just MeeDermott's name showing. FitzGerald was more diplomatic after that. Fine Gael could get three seats.

Michael O'Leary came out of the Mercedes like a greyhound out of 'a trap. Scarf flapping from his neck, he made long, quick strides across Bannow Road to the gate of Batcheelor's factory in Cabra. It was ten minuutes to eight, and already many of the workers had gone inside.

Michael hopped up and down in the morning chill and stuck out his hand when the workers who were straggling towards the gate were still yards away. "Hope I can count-on your support ... "

But, the Mere, the Mere ...

If one is leader of the Labour Party and one comes to a working-class estate to collar workers as they shuffle and sniffle into a factory to face a long day on the line, and if one wants to impress on them the need to mainntain working-class solidarity by suppporting the party of Labour, so that shoulder to shoulder we can march ever onward to the equality, demoocracy and social justice of the Sociaalist Republic . . . well, one really shouldn't bring one's Merc.

But there are no flies on Michael.

Hardly had the Labour leader crossed the road when Michael's driver pulled away, drove twenty yards up the street and tucked the Mercedes in behind a Fiat. Out of sight, out of mind.

There was a Sinn Fein poster in the window of a house opposite the gate and after Michael had been shaking hands for a while, a young man emerrged from the house carrying a fistful of leaflets. He walked over and stood near O'Leary and the two vied for attention for a few minutes.

"Vote Sinn Fein! You know how much will be coming out of your pocket, if yer man gets in!"

"They'll get a bullet in the head if you get in!"

Then Michael decided that this wasn't too dignified and put some disstance between himself and the ProV0 who had interrupted breakfast to commpete with the Tanaiste.

A small, wide woman on her way towards the gate told the Labour cannvassers, "You nearly gave me heart failure, I thought it was a strike when I saw you standing there!"

"Were you hoping?'," asked one of the group.

"I was."

Then it was time for the woman to go into work - and Michael and the Provo went their separate ways to breakfast.

Who stopped the bus here? Who said this was a good place to canvass? Probably bloody Alexis. Just look at it ...

Garret was out. of the bus and crossing the road in Ringsend, sun down, lights up, the end of a quick afternoon tour around his Dublin constituency. Woman with a pram, shake hands, move on ... where? No bloody people.

There are few sights so pitiful as politicians at election time, hands at the ready, and no punters to press the flesh with. Garret, Alexis FitzGerald, Councillor Joe Doyle.

Try up here. They tum into Oliver Plunkett Avenue. Not a sausage. There's a guy ... no, he's moving the other way. Garret spots that the door of No. 180 is open, someone standing there. Hi! He moves towards the door.

And the door ... begins ... slowly closing .

Garret still moving towards the house . . . door still closing . . . he reaches the door ...

Eh ...

Click.

Garret stands there a second, looks at the closed door. Oh dear. Garret knocks at the door. Waits. Nothing. Oh dear.

Then, he and Alexis and Joe are crossing over to the flats and knocking on doors with the rest of the canvasssers, and the way it works is that the other Fine Gaelers knock on the doors - and Garret moves from door to door, shaking hands.

And a few minutes later Garret is moving on, and it's just a small, soonnforgotten incident in a long political career, but jeeze what a way to make a living.

The whip around Dublin began in Rathmines. Pressing the flesh in shops and on pavements. FitzGerald, despite his reputation for disliking the carnival antics of elections, is accomplished at the game and applies himself to it, rarely flinching. He also has a rare ability to carve out an area of intimacy with someone who wants to talk when the hand has been shaken.

A woman in a supermarket has been living in a flat on her own for twenty years and her rent hasn't been collected in seven months and she's worried that she may be evicted. In a spontaneous gesture of comfort, FitzzGerald puts both hands on her shoullders, shakes ihis head, no, no, they can't, no, that's not on. They may be able to raise the rent, but not .by too much, and you can't be put out, don't worry.

And ten minutes later the bus is pulling to a stop in Camden Street, beside a lamp-post where a guy on a ladder is putting up Fine Gael posters.

A ladder. '

No, he couldn't.

In Galway, Charlie Haughey climbbed a ladder and got his picture in the papers shaking hands with a painter. But Charlie didn't climb the ladder to shake hands with a painter r: he climbed the ladder to get his picture in the papers climbing a ladder to shake hands with a painter.

And Garret ... Garret is climbing the ladder to put up a poster and allthough he's wearing a pleaseme-fall grimace this is the one that will make the front pages. (Getting To The Top Of The Poll, headlines the Indeependent, in a burst of creativity.)

"Dr. FitzGerald, hold it there for a second - give us a wave with the other hand."

"You want me to fall off."

That would make an even better picture. (Garret Topples Down Poll).

Alexis FitzGerald's face is smiling blandly, which is the second thing Alexis' face can do. The other thing is a pouting, chewing expression, the look of a man who is giving great thought to whether he should wear the blue- tie or the green one. His vulgar mayoral chain dangling from his neck, Alexis saunters languidly from place to place, his hands cupped over his crotch, like he's not too sure if the natives are friendly.

He and the rest of the Fine Gaelers look oddest when they reach Pearse House Flats, a grim place full of cheerrful people. Loudspeaker blaring, woman in a fur coat holding leaflets, Alexis and his chain. Little kid asks a canvasser where the big bus is.

"The double-decker? It's not here." "It was last year."

It's getting that young kids think elections come once a year, like Christtmas. They're all over the canvassers, demanding stickers. I've got more than you, you have not, yes I have, hey mister he has more than me, give us another sticker mister.

Alexis is arguing with three young guys. When he moves on, the oldest and toughest growls, "He won't get my bleedin' vote." The guy is sixteen.

As the Fine Gaelers leave the flats two eggs come lofting across the road, splat, splat. Garret is already on the bus. Could be the egg throwers didn't really want to hit him and it was just a token effort. Then, maybe they just took a long time deciding whether to throw the eggs. Things like that need a lot of thought, the price of eggs these days. .

It was on the cards from the beginning that Charlie would end up knocking heads with aussies. The folks from Down Under had arrived out in Charlie's Xanadu in Kinsealy before eight that morning and made the cardinal error of filming the house. Naughty, they were told.

The head-banging didn't start until Skerries, which was the fourth stop on the high-rev zip around the Sunday morning church gates in North Dublin.

The day startea wrtn a cheerful and even cheeky Charlie. "This is my wife Maureen," he announced biblically to the assembled press, "in whom I'm well pleased. Don't know if she can say the same for me!"

Zoooom, brake, out you get. The Mass is over, go in peace. Here they come. Smile, shake, howya doin', don't forget the eighteenth. Cheerio. Zoooom, brake, out you get.

The technique in front of a church door or steps owes a lot to soccer. Stand there, hands folded, until the Mass is over. When the crowd begins oozing out through the narrow doorrway, like tooth paste flooding from a crushed tube, you move forward like a goalkeeper narrowing the angle for a striker, yourself and the heavies like Ray Burke. Or like passport control. Nq one gets by without they can show the' imprint of a politician's palm on theirs.

The Skerries show-down comes when Charlie agrees to cross the road and give the Australian TV crew an interview as he waits for Mass to end. No problems to begin with, the elecc.tion is not a popularity contest, it's all about unemployment and prices and "the personal popularity polls of political leaders is not all that relevant."

Besides, "some of my friends tell me we're suffering a concerted media campaign that's particularly personaalised - why, I don't know."

Articles 2 and 3, no problem. Diivorce, well, the position reflects the ethos of the majority of the populaation. And, yes, there is an anomaly, the thing about church nullity.

"In 1979 you introduced the Family Planning Act ... "

"These are not issues in this cammpaign!"

"Why did you make it necessary ... " "This is not an issue and I'm not prepared to discuss it."

"But why did you ... "

"This may be of interest to Austraalians but it's not an issue in this cammpaign."

The Aussie interviewer, Andrew Ollie, murmurs something about it being odd to be granted an interview but to have certain subjects excluded from discussion. They, apparently, do things differently Down Under. He changes tack, works his way around the houses, finally comes back to ...

'''You have acknowledged the anoomaly on divorce, in the area of contraaception ... "

And Andy Ollie is looking at Charrlie's back and the back is moving away and it's just beginning to dawn on the Aussies that that's it, time to wrap up the billabong, Charlie's gone walkkabout. Party leader stomps off in huff, on camera. That little clip of film will probably turn up on a Denis Norden

compilation of Great TV Moments some Christmas night on the box.

As Charlie moves on and over from Ray Burke's constituency to his own, the crowds that hang about after Mass are noticeably bigger. Charlie is having a fine time shaking hands. At the last stop on the trail, St. Brendan's in Cooolock, there's another confrontation. As Charlie shakes hands Bernadette McAlliskey arrives with her supporters. She's not shaking hands, she's holding a meeting to tell people what she stands for and why they should vote for her.

A bunch of young Fianna Failers with placards start moving back toowards where McAliskey is standing on the back of a truck.

"Right back, c'mon!" "Block her off!"

They're holding their placards high to block McAliskey from view and they're chanting that they want Charrlie.

"We cannot pay for the mess they have made ... "

"We want Charlie!"

" the North will not just go away "

"We want Charlie!"

It's all very em barrassing and Charrlie comes through the crowd, arms aloft, calming his supporters. He . shakes hands with McAliskey (click, that's the picture for tomorrow's papers) and the two exchange some banter.

McAliskey announces, "Your leader has spoken - and he says I'm entitled to speak."

Then it's time for Charlie to get into his Mercedes and speed back to Kinsealy with the wife .in whom he is well pleased - to get out his calculator and do his sums for an alternative buddget.

Albert Reynolds has been hearing voices, poor lad. Whispers carrried on the wind from the pubs and lounge bars of the land. "Pub talk," he grated, "the most effective way of getting word around in this country." Albert used to be responsible for the telephone system.

The issue was the allegations of a smear campaign against Charlie Haugghey, the venue was a Fianna Fail press conference in Jury's Hotel. By the second week of the campaign the word back from the doorsteps was such that Charlie was deciding to keep a looser rein on the microphone. He wasn't starring ,in FF party political broadcasts anymore, he was just playing cameo roles.

But Charlie's unpopularity has noothing to do with arms trials, Knock Airport, indecision, borrowing, cookking the books or the way he parts his hair. It's a vicious, personalised smear campaign.

"Headline after headline," moaned Charlie, "morning after morning. Everyone in this room knows what we mean."

Albert Reynolds didn't. He seemed to think it was people in pubs, Fine Gael people, whispering. "You all understand what I mean by that."

Nuff said, nod's as good as a wink, know what I mean?

No, not really.

On to more substantial stuff. White paper. Dessie O'Malley is worried that there may be "a war or some kind of emergency," and Ireland won't have its own supply of white paper. Which is why he and Fianna Fail would do everything in its power to save Clonndalkin Paper Mills.

Nationalise it? Like Brian Lenihan has promised the workers? Well, Dessie didn't want to say no, but he definitely didn't want to say yes. On balance, after pressure, he came down on the side of no. Then, a few minutes later on he tried to sneak in a maybe. Which leaves you wondering about what's the point of all that white paper if politicians won't make a definite mark on it but keep on experiimenting with invisible inks that dissappear after an election.

Michael O'Leary had lots of white paper. A six page press release. The National Development Corporation. Ta-raaaaaaaa! Years of promises and threats and bargains and eight days before the election the thing appears. Two days after Fianna Fail had proomised to throw £200m into the emmployment kitty - Mick pops up with his NDC and ... £200m to throw into the employment kitty.

Honest, no kidding. We've been discussing this for months. The five civil servants flanking Mick nodded wisely. "This is not a Labour Party press conference," said Mick, "it's a Departmental press conference." He said that seven times. "The unnveiling of this ... it is quite fortuiitous!"

That could have been okay, par for the course, and the first half hour of the conference went by with easy questions while the journalists digested the six pages. Then the hard questions began, and Mick came apart like someeone had unscrewed his navel.

It was the bit about taking nine semi-state companies under the ummbrella of the NDC that got Mick in trouble. What happens if, say, Irish Steel loses more money than has been allocated for it, where does it go for more? The NDC, says Mick.

"And suppose the NDC hasn't got the money?"

Mick tapped his biro on the table, squared his jaw and said ... "Suppose NDC hasn't got the money, Mmmmm."

The difference between Mick's NDC and Fianna Fail's National Enterrprise Agency seemed to be that Mick and his mates had put more thought into theirs ... but the thought was of a very low quality.

As the conference went on laughter became the order of the day, even the civil servants joined in. Mick became more agitated - but finally even he smiled. As the thing ended bits of the Labour Party were being scraped off the walls.

FitzGerald getting on the bus after zapping ·Navan. Bit of a drive now to get to Kells. Picks up the Irish Press, shuffles through the pages. Editorial page, looks down along the three leaaders, none of which concern the elecction. Begins folding paper, spots that the TV column is reviewing the TV coverage of the election. Hmmmmm. Eyes down. Minutes later he's asking if the TV coverage hasn't made people bored with the whole thing - is it a boring election?

It's more serious than last time, no funny hats. Still quite a bit of nonnsense involved.

"It's a necessary part of the game," says FitzGerald. He reads where Fianna Fail say that they don't believe the election should be conducted as a presidential contest. "Well, if they don't have a president ... " •