Fianna Fail: The Tree we Planted is Rotten
How have we got into the position that an amalgam of these two sets of people is the only alternative to the Coalition?" People everywhere seem to be asking this question with a sense of shock since, within a week of the election result, the operators on both wings of Fianna Fail have, one after another, been exposed to public view by the newspapers, radio and television. The question is easily answered and there is no justification for shock.
The position did not develop beetween the election and the party meetting at which it was "unanimously" deecided to nominate Mr. Haughey as Taoiseach. It was a gradual process. The Fianna Fail party has changed in three ways:-
(1) It has lost its national purpose. (2) It has become the party of big business. The "men of no property" don't count any more.
(3) It has publicly and formally renounced the high moral standards, on which Mr. de Valera always insissted.
In 1969/70 Fianna Fail discovered that the aim of securing "the Unity and Independence of Ireland as a Republic" had not survived the accuumulation of more than forty years of "Free State fat" on its belly. It was no longer the national movement. The motivation, which maintained its morale through thick and thin was gone. The party lost its self respect and began to degenerate. The recent election campaign illustrates this.
The failure to gain a majority in the most favourable set of circumstances they ever experienced was not due to the electoral scheme produced by the Commission working within the tight guidelines laid down by the Fianna Fail government. The party was not trying to win. The effort for an overrall majority is the summation of the efforts to obtain a majority in each constituency. But in almost all, if not all, constituencies each candidate had his or her personal canvassers and to canvass for one individual means cannvassing against the others on the panel. South Dublin was not the only place where the effort was to put a colleague out. When a number of constituencies are effectively trying for a minority it cannot be said that the party is tryying to win.
Then there was the "Haughey Factor". After the same rumours have been assiduously circulated for twentyyfive years, how is there suddenly an anti-Haughey stampede? The reason is that this time there was at least one anti-Haughey candidate in each connstituency. This time the rumours were whispered at the doors - by Fianna Fail canvassers, and this time they worked. Soldiers of Destiny! Legion of the Rearguard!
The first big subscription to Fianna Fail was £500, which arrived in the early 1930s and was sent back by reeturn post. A subsequent National
Executive meeting reversed this deciision. Gradually more cheques materiallised, mainly at election time. First Comh-comhairle Atha Cliath and later Taca were formed to accommodate the new extra-mural upper classes. Yet, the general character of the party held up reasonably well until the capiital taxation of the 1973 Coalition really turned the big boys to Fianna Fail. It wasn't just subscriptions that came now. Big business was investing in the party and expecting a return. Headquarters expanded to match the money available to finance it.
The "Think Tank" made its appearrance and brought forth the 1977 Manifesto - the document that prooduced the first twenty seat majority and wrecked the economy. Financial restraints at election time disappeared but dedication dirninshed. Now the party can't do without this income. It is in the hands of the new shareeholders who are paying the piper and calling the tune. The foot troops are mere cyphers and they are beginning to realise it.
These two factors played their part in weakening the moral fibre and the pride of the party but the real deterrioration came not in 1982 but in 1970. It came in the full glare of maxiimum publicity - the Arms Crisis, the abortive Trial, the actual Trial and the Verdict, carrying the clearest 'possible indictment of the party Leadership. It culminated with the Motion of Connfidence passed by the Dail on the 4th November 1970.
The standards of public morality thus established were formally adopt- ~ ed by the organisation at the 1971 ~ Ard Fheis and both the people and the I?I media have been fully aware of them ~. ever since. These are the standards that :.. inevitably produced the new Fianna ~ Fail, which has paraded itself publicly ~ in all its squalor since the election. In ~ case they might have been forgotten, Magill magazine marked the tenth anniversary of these events by assemmbling and publishing most of the allready known facts and producing more corroborative evidence. The media, the guardians of the public weal, weren't interested, neither were the people nor, indeed, were the loyal opposition. The reaction was as it was in 1970, to gather protectively around the then Taoiseach, who presided over the whole affair but who heard nothing, saw nothing and forgot everything. Nevertheless, in spite of the cover up, everyone was and still is aware of the facts.
The recent performances of the people, from whom the government will be formed, which have been deetailed in the Press and demonstrated on radio and television, are merely a manifestation at internal party level of the standards democratically accepted as suitable for government for the past twelve years. So, what is all the shock about now, twelve years later? This is what the -party , which? as Soldiers of Destiny, set out so long ago from the La Scala Theatre to achieve the natioonal objective, has come to. Some time before he died my father said to me "The tree we planted is rotten, the only thing to do is to cut it down".
Still, I don't think the people really deserve the two alternative governnments available to them. But the media do; they sponsored and sustainned them by sweeping the dirt under the carpet and nailing the carpet down.