He did the State some service

Michael Mills, one of the most influential political commentators for decades, later the first Ombudsman, has published a revealing memoir. By Vincent Browne.

The winner of the gold medal for good conduct when in his teens in the late 1930s at Ballyfin College, tells in his memoir how a fellow journalist in the Irish Press, probably some time in the late 1950s, on being pestered by a news editor to check out whether there had been a fire in a convent down the country, replied irritably: "I was talking to the Reverend Mother and she told me there was fuck all to it".

Earlier on, he tells a story of how, when he was a Passionist seminarian, he was accused by a disciplinarian Assistant Master of listening in to a conversation he was having with another priest. Michael Mills writes: "Since he was one of the dullest people I had ever met, I regarded it as a serious insult."

The humour is surprising, not just in the memoir but at all, for throughout his career as political correspondent of the Irish Press, from 1964 to 1983, there was little humour in his journalism, and the role of Ombudsman is hardly the platform for sustained comedy.

In the memoir, Hurler on the Ditch, he tells a story of family disruption because his father wasn't successful at business, moving from job to job, the family descending deeper into penury. It must have been traumatic for the young Mills but, to his credit, he tells nothing of that.

He joined the Passionist order for a while, leaving only when he was found to have a health problem, and then fell into journalism, mainly because of a proficiency in shorthand.

Another surprise is that his early journalistic interests were in film and theatre and not at all in politics. Indeed, as with his career in journalism, he became political correspondent of the Irish Press by chance, having correctly divined, from his exposure to theatre, that a handful of Independent TDs who had spoken against the proposed introduction of the turnover tax (not VAT) in 1964 would vote for the minority government of Sean Lemass and keep it in office.

Michael Mills initially was not interested in becoming political correspondent of the Irish Press because the de Valera family had ensured that the newspaper, which had been funded by people from around Ireland and from the United States to create an "alternative" media voice to the dominant media of the time (mainly the Independent group – what changes?), had become a propaganda organ, primarily for Eamon de Valera himself. Michael Mills did not want to be part of that.

He tells how political reporters were deputed to record verbatim the utterances of the great man, no matter how contradictory and/or banal, and how these were reproduced faithfully, with miniscule coverage being given to opposing views. What Eamon de Valera did to the Irish Press group, how he used it shamelessly for self-publicity, and how his family came not just to control the Irish Press group but to own it, is one of the great unexposed pieces of corruption of modern Irish history.

That piece of egregious corruption, although staring Michael Mills in the face for well over 20 years, never focused with him. Instead he became obsessed with what he regarded as another manifestation of corruption in the person of Charles Haughey. Michael Mills says he perceived a "character flaw" in Haughey from an early stage as did others he quotes. But what "character flaw", and why were the readers of the Irish Press not told about it at the time? At one stage he says about Charlie Haughey: "I became convinced that he was a considerable threat to the democratic process". This echoes what Desmond O'Malley says occasionally when he doesn't remember that he collaborated – or appeared to – with this same "threat to the democratic process" in the perversion of the course of justice in an (unsuccessful) attempt to have evidence withdrawn in the then impending arms trial. Martin O'Donoghue talks in similar terms about Haughey, without explaining why he so willingly served in government under Haughey.

Maybe there was a reason for these to believe Haughey was a threat to the democratic processes, but shouldn't they tell us why and in what way? More particularly, if Michael Mills in the 1960s or 1970s became convinced Haughey was such a threat, did he not owe it to the readers of the Irish Press to tell them and tell them in what way Haughey was such a threat? Could there have been anything more important to tell the readers at the time?

Michael Mills tell us: "the person for whom I had the greatest liking and respect was George Colley". Had someone else written this of Michael Mills, one might have expected him to take this as a further insult, for George Colley was one of the dullest politicians anyone ever met. He was also a catastrophic Minister for Finance from 1977 to 1979, when he almost brought the economy to ruin.

The main feature of the book is Mills's account of the arms trial of 1970. The account is unsatisfactory in a number of respects, notably because the book was poorly edited, which means there is a lot of repetition and unexplained observations. But again, I suspect that because of that anti-Haughey prejudice, he fails to appreciate that when Haughey first agreed to the provision of arms for defence committees in Northern Ireland in September 1969, most of his ministerial colleagues – and most of the Irish electorate – at the time would have approved, because there was a widespread perception that nationalist areas were vulnerable and defenceless.

It is a pity Michael Mills did not write this memoir nearer the time he served as political correspondent for, one suspects, his memory lets him down at this distance and, no doubt, he is overlooking very many of the inside perspectives he gleaned as a respected political correspondent for so long. He was the best political correspondent of his day and one of the best of modern times – I can think of only one better: Gerald Barry.

Aside from the anti-Haughey bias, Michael Mills was fair and balanced in his reportage. A criticism might be made that he, like almost all other political correspondents and commentators, were writing from "within", never challenging the ideological basis upon which the political system and culture were founded, but that is for another time.

Michael Mills was/is a decent man, who deserves another gold medal for good conduct for the service he did to the public, both as political correspondent and as Ombudsman.

Hurler on the Ditch will be enjoyed by the many people who admired his journalism.

Just one further point: during almost all the time Michael Mills was political correspondent of the Irish Press, Tim Pat Coogan was editor of the newspaper. There are a mere two passing references to Coogan in the book. Curious that.

Hurler on the Ditch by Michael Mills is published by Currach Press for €13.99