Canon Fodder - Canon James Horan and the political mists of Mayo

The road from Charlestown to Kilkelly rises, swoops, twists and turns with all the whimsy of a starling's flight. The sun reflects from the countless million snowwflakes carpeting the Mayo countryside. Suddenly, rising from the hills and trees, like a tightly woven white net cast skyward by a giant hand, a mist makes a mockery of the sun, reduces the road to a stretch of tarmacadam that peters out twenty yards ahead, and sucks the colour and substance from all it leaves visible. Within seconds Barnaacoogue and the seven and a half thousand foot stretch of flat earth that is Knock Airport is blending into the mist - as insubstantial as a politician's promise. By Gene Kerrigan

In Kilkelly and Swinford and Charlestown they call down curses on Barry Desmond's bald head. Dublin again, they've spat on The West again, bad cess to them. The anger is greatest in the area known as The Black Triangle - bounnded by Charlestown, SWinford, Kiltimagh, Knock and Ballyhaunis, with Kilkelly in the centre - shaped not so much like a triangle as a jagged porter stain. "The employyment is already having an effect", says Stephen Tarpey, PRO for the Airport Action Committee. "There's a hunndred and thirty people working there and they're paid every week and they spend every week". Stephen Tarpey owns a grocery shop in Kilkelly.

Further afield, in places like Castlebar and Ballina, the reaction is not so much anger as the wry amusement and chagrin of people caught pulling a fast one. "It might have been a bit of a white elephant", says a farmer, "but, sure, t'would do us no harm."

Monsignor James Horan, parish priest of Knock, was born in the village of Partry , Mayo, on the shores of Lough Mask. Even before he went to Maynooth to don the black habit he was practicing his own combination of spiriitual and temporal works of mercy. Much of the land in the area was run-dale, land common to all, owned by none, used for grazing. Untended and unfertilised, the land was degenerating. Many of the local farmers owned land that was split up - a field here, a field there. Horan set about convincing farmers to swap fields, to persuade others to sell to the Land Commission, to parcel out the land in ways that made it most productive.

"I graduated from that kind of thing to airports!"

After serving for four years as curate in Dunbarton, Scotland, Horan returned to Ireland in 1939 and was assignned to Connemara. In one parish after another he built a reputation as a man who gets things done which many an aspiring politician might envy - and which some unquesstionably do. Horan is not shy about his motive for putting his organising abilities to use on behalf of his flock.

"I found that it's always much easier to win the hearts of people, to convince them of your sincerity, if you do things for them."

There was plenty of scope for his talents. The flow of people from the West in the forties and fifties has left scars that are visible today - broken houses, lifeless villaages. Horan organised groups to hire farm equipment, torrmented politicians to get roads or drains improved, organiised campaigns for aforestation and electrification.

His reputation was secure locally long before he came to national prominence as The Man Who Brought The Pope To Ireland. Today he resides in Knock in a presbytery that resembles in atmosphere the headquarters of a small but thriving business empire. Inside the front door there is a clock-in machine for the employees. Horan's study is a strange combination of ancient and modern - books of theology, a colour television and video machine, a commfortable old armchair, a radio-telephone, old keepsakes and shiny filing cabinets.

He exhibits a measure of vanity - books and papers on the floor by his chair are tidied out of camera range, his habit and thinning hair are perhaps unconsciously arranged by quick movements of the hand. He abruptly refuses to allow himself be photographed when he leans informally on the arm of the chair, chin in hand. "No, stop that, put that down - I prefer to be photographed with my hands clasped like this".

He obviously enjoys testing his mettle against that of the press and his thrusts and parries are carefully wrapped in politeness - a politeness that is dispensed with savagely when a certain event is mentioned. The Devil and The Dancehall.

"I knew you were going to bring that up! They always mention that! It's ridiculous, ridiculous! That's all because a Redemptorist wrote a pamphlet and he mentioned· that on the first page of ... I knew you were going to bring that up!"

Legend has it that Horan organised a regular dance in the parish hall in Tooreen in the fifties. One night, goes the story, a girl was dancing with a well dressed, handsome man - when she looked and saw that he had a cloven foot. The sign of the Devil. Legend goes a bit vague at this point. Some say the story was spread by Albert Reynolds, to drive the dancers away and towards a ballroom of his own in Cloonfad. Others say it was Horan who spread the story as an extra added attraction for the dancers. The tale has become part of the Horan legend but today the Monsignor has moved far from the legends and superstitions of the West to a position as powerful as that of any politician ˆone from which he has thrown a controversy into the poliitical process which has left the politicians hurling metaaphorical Jumbo jets at one another.

The members of the Castlebar Urban District Council were solemnly pondering photographs of the town's sewers. Mmmmmm, I see. Here, Dick, you have a look. Grease was blocking parts of the system and the Town Engineer was having problems getting the guilty business people to stop dumping their waste. "We wrote to a nummber of firms but ... "

"Sure, if the fella's guilty he's not going to write back and tell you."

Independent Councillor John Heneghan asked stoicly if there had been any reply from CIE regarding the bus shelter. No, nothing. "I presume we got nothing back from the County Council regarding the steps?" Nothing.

Urban District Councils don't have much muscle these days. One of the few powers ieft to them since the aboliition of rates is that of planning - and Councillors estimate that about a: third of the planning applications coming beefore them concern work which is already under way or has even been completed. Seems like nobody pays them much heed. But they do get to talk a lot.

Item 7 on the agenda was the big one and everyone knew it. A motion from Fianna Fail Dick Morrin condemnning the Government decision not to go ahead with the buillding of Knock Airport.

By Item 6 Dick was straining at the bit, tossing in refeerences to Knock Airport and drawing fire from the Fine Gaelers. Fianna Fail's Christy Fitzgerald said that last June Fine Gael had all the answers, now they were stuck with it and the Minister needn't bother asking Councillors for ideas on funding. Martin Hopkins, FG, complained about Coun-: cillor Fitzgerald's "small minded and twisted mentality". Some of the lads in FF had got short shrift when Charlie got in ...

Dick Morrin was in with a chortle: "Some of your lads weren't even in office to be shifted!"

After a few minutes of this the chairperson, Labour's Johnny Mee, exploded, "Ah, for God's sake cut' out the blood y politics! I'm sick to the teeth of it! Ridiculous, this is!"

When Item 7, Knock Airport, came under the hammer, John Heneghan leaned back in his chair and smiled sardoniically. "Proposed, seconded and passed!"

But Dick Morrin had the ball and he was determined to run with it. He felt sorry for Fine Gael's Paddy O'Toole Øsorry that a junior Minister; Barry Desmond, could get the Government to reverse its stance. "Barry Desmond was helped by a well orchestrated campaign by the media, RTE in particular, and the national newspapers and people who came forward as great authoritarians on airports".

Those politicans who opposed the airport, in particular The BKS Party - Browne, Kemmy and Sherlock - who run this particular country, will pay the ultimate price at the next election, warned Dick. The attitude displayed by Dublin was one of a bold, pampered child.

The stand-up row, everyone knew, would be between Dick for Fianna Fail and Frank Durcan for Fine Gael who have been trading verbal punches for years. But Fine Gael's Christy Tynan, a school teacher who came on the Council three years ago, became rapidly disillusioned with politics and who has declared that he won't stand again when his period in office is up, was first to bat for Fine Gael.

One word, he said, stuck in his throat. Orchestrated.

What was orchestrated was the Fianna Fail charge that the Coalition was pulling out economically from Connacht. "That charge has as much sincerity as hoor s kiss. "

Yahoooo! The Councillor's know a good one when they hear it. The hoots and cheers came from all sides of the table. "You must have got one!" , taunted Dick Morrin.

Tynan went to town on Charlie Haughey. "A second rater who couldn't decide the simplest thing. He couldn't even decide when to have an election - that was decided for him by the political journalists." They thought it was great having the Monsignor appear in Fianna Fail election literature, "but he fooled the lot of them. Haughey thought it was a grass strip he was promising. This man used most questionable tactics on politicians of both sides."

What the people needed, said Tynan, was a regional tech, a true industrial infrastructure, roads, phones - "They don't need the follies that are going to puff the egos of a few vain men".

As Christy Fitzgerald took up the running for Fianna Fail, John Heneghan began reading a magazine, looking up only when Christy got stuck in a sentence attacking the Dublin establishment. "Paddy O'Toole couldn't take on the might of the Eastern ... the Eastern ... "

Heneghan smiled. "The Eastern bloc?", he suggested.

"The Eastern bloc", Christy swallowed it. Heneghan's smile broadened and he returned to his magazine.

It was his prominence during and after the Pope's visit, combined with the impending general election and the political needs of the new Taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, that allowed Monsignor Horan dictate the agenda for discussion on the needs of the West. And needs there unquestionalbly are. The reduction of powers of local authorities affected the West far more gravely than it did the East - where the necessary infrastructure for industrial development, the roads, lighting, communications, were already largely developed and taken for granted.

When Charlie Haughey brought a cavalcade of Ministerial Meres to Castlebar for a ritual unveiling of a plaque to himmself he was joined in the ceremony by Monsignor Horan and the Archbishop of Tuam. Horan took the opportunity to extract a minimal promise of an airport and put his organiisational talents to work. Expenditure of £567,000 had been incurred before the project got formal government approval and Horan hurried things along towards his own goal of an international airport, arranging for work to begin on drainnage and access roads in the run-up to the general election `a period in which politicians would be highly unlikely to challenge the actions of a popular figure who was merely doing his bit for the West.

The projects, its defenders and espousers, have had a Fianna Fail tinge from the beginning. Horan himself appearred in Fianna Fail election literature. Another member of the Airport Company board, Mayo County Manager Michael O'Malley, is widely known as a Fianna Fail supporrter, and another member Cathal Duffy, is a close associate of Fianna Fail TD Padraig Flynn. The chairperson of the Action Committee, Frank McCullough, is also a Fianna Fail supporter and is believed to be ultimately angling for a party nomination.

As a result, the controversy over the airport has obbscured discussion of the needs of the region and has settled into a row between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, with the forrmer accusing the latter of abandoning the West.

ITGWU Branch Secretary in Castle bar, Michael Killcoyne, who comes from the village of Louisburgh, thirty miles from Monsignor Horan's birthplace, ticks off the casualties in the area. Travenol in Bellmullet, 250 jobs gone: Travenol in Castlebar down from 1500 to just over a thousand jobs: In January Roadstone will put half of its 60 workers on a 3-day week; Ryan's Hotel in Westport, closed for the winter, 30 jobs gone: Castlebar Bacon down from 320 to 140 in two years: innumerable small firms making six or seven workers redundant.

The unions have written to Horan without acknowledgement. The contractor, Frank Harrington, runs a non-union firm and, while the reason for opposing union membership is officially that if union standards were applied the airport would not be economically viable, defenders of the airport talk privately of "union disturbers" and of tales of horror from British Leyland.

Even defenders of the airport admit, however, that interrnational aviation authorities are unlikely to look kindly on an international airport employing part-time labour, as Horan insists it must.

Frank Durcan, Fine Gael's heavy, stood up, looked Fianna Fail's Dick Moran dead in the eye and said, "I don't think Our Lady of Knock would ask for an airport at Charlestown!" He paused, "It's a mortal sin, what's going on!"

"For fifty years Fianna Fail were in power - and you were the cause of all the trouble in this country!"

Morrin spat back, "We were the champions of the small man! This was a land of milk and honey!"

Durcan brought in the Arms Trial ("There were fellas with patches over their eyes and all kinds of animals - and all of the same political stripe!"). Fianna Fail were the lowest form of political animals in the world, he thunderred, not just in Ireland, the world! "They're trying to capitaalise on Our Lady of Knock! They're trying to make politiical capital out of Knock shrine - and make it a Fianna Fail shrine!"

Dick Morrin, who knows a good one when he hears it, gave Durcan points for that one, like a talent contest judge applauding a comedian. "A Fianna Fail shrine! Fair play to you!"

The game goes on. The airport site is ten miles from Knock, much closer to Charlestown and Kilkelly. The term Knock Airport was used at the beginning, when it was most useful. Now, a protest meeting in Charlestown was enjoined to stop using the term - it's Connacht Regional Airport, nothing to do' with Knock, everything to do with helping the West prosper. But Dick Morrin, Padraig Flynn and others habitually use the term Knock Airport.

The West, in its perennial battle to drag resources across the Shannon, saw Monsignor Horan working his game with the politicians - a suggestion here, a promise there, the fast and deadly moves of a man long used to battling for reesources, making something out of not much. And if he could pull it off - fair play to him, t'would do us no harm. It mightn't be exactly what's needed but ... it's better than nothing.

The West, still under-industrialised, exists in the same social environment created to sustain and encourage the open economy which has prevailed for the past twenty years. There is no longer a need for Monsignor Horan to organise parish dances, with the Devil as guest star or otherrwise. Four miles from Claremorris there's The Beaten Path, a pleasure emporium of drink and disco, chicken, chips and cabaret. The Wolfe Tones sing of a nation once again and well dressed punters punch the air with all the sincerity of Ardoyne provos.

The Western People publishes a picture of Sean Moran and Mary Mullen, married at Knock Church. But the Mttyo News also publishes a wedding picture, of Rita Joyce and Tony Bevan being married in the Elim Pentecostal Church outside Westport. The fundamentalists have made inroads in the county since Pastor Seamus Tunney moved there in 1977. The new Pastor, John McEvoy from Dublin lives in a plush house in Seeaune, a couple of miles outside Westport and tends to his flock of forty locals. They believe only in the bible as the word of God, reject the ritualism of the Catholic Church ("You don't need saints on the windows - you need them in the pews") and in the heart of Cathoolic Mayo, a few miles from Monsignor Horan's Knock, are accepted and tolerated by others in a way that would have been inconceivable in the fifties.

Fine Gael promised a regional tech at election time. If young people from Mayo want to learn the skills necessary for industrial growth they must go to Galway or Sligo. If someone at the new international airport wanted to call Castle bar they would have to go through a telephone operaator. If Castlebar wants to call Westport, eleven miles down the road, the same applies.

Independent Councillor John Heneghan told Castlebar Urban District Council, "Six million pounds has been squandered. Something could have been done other than close the thing down". Heneghan believes the site could be used for other purposes - a training site for pilots or the army or as a base for a new town or for industry - not to just let six million pounds drain away down a mountain side. "The airport should have creeped before it took off. Some people got carried away."

Monsignor James Horan says, "Of course I was innterested in an airport for Knock shrine. But that wasn't my only motive". Everywhere else has an airport, why not the West? Look what an airport did for Shannon, look what an airport did for Lourdes.

"Nothing more important has happened in the West in fifty years. People have a greater pride in themselves, you can see it already. There's new initiative, people are buying property in the area, getting in on it." Monsignor Horan is adamant that the airport will go ahead.

"A politician! That's a terrible thing to say! How could I be a politician, how could anyone accuse me of that? What's the definition of politics, it's from the Greek, isn't it?" He picks up an Oxford Dictionary and pores through the pages.

''Pol ... pol ... where is it here, politic ... mmmmmm, judicious, expedient mmmmmm, try polity, down here ... Form or process of civil government ... that's what it is! Helping citizens!"

The Concise Oxford dictionary does defme politic in Monsignor Horan's terms of judicious, expedient. The defiinition in full is: (Of person) sagacious, prudent, (of action etc.] judicious, expedient; scheming, crafty....