How Haughey came to terms with the Gregory team

Pushing on the Open Door. By Gene Kerriagn

By the time it was over the office at 20 Summerhill Parade was smothering in paper. It's a community centre office around which revolve the various strivings of activists who have for years been trying to organise a fight back against the waves of economic and social problems flooding the neighbourhood. The avalanche of paper was started when Tony Gregory handed Charlie Haughey a two-page document on the Tuesday after the election.

Gregory didn't get to be TD for Dublin Central because he has a nice smile or a winning way on the doorrsteps. Throughout the 'seventies he was part of a group of social workers and political activists who organised one project after another, fought one Corporation plan after another, always seemed to be on the winning side of arguments - and still saw the centre city crumple in degradation and poverty.

When Gregory ran for Dublin Corrporation in 1979 he had to argue with some of his fellow activists that one of the councillors representing the area should be someone who had been involved in the fight and not leave the field to politicians on the make. One of the most active of the social worrkers in the area and a close associate of Gregory, Mick Rafferty, argued at first that they should get someone to change his name to Kermit The Frog and run him for the seat. The key activists had little time for what they considered the soap opera antics of politicians.

By the time the 1981 general elecction came around Gregory had about 200 people supporting his candidacy. He failed to win a seat that time beecause, although he was well known for his activism in the city centre, he was unknown elsewhere in the constiituency. That campaign got his name and policies known sufficiently in the fringes of the constituency to give him the boost he needed to win in 1982.

So, when the result of the 1982 election made it clear that Gregory had a pivotal role to play in the forrmation of a new government, it wasn't simply a case of dangling a vote in front of Haughey and FitzGerald and asking for best offers. The inevitable negotiations with the party leaders would be conducted as if they were part of any other project that the inner city group had fought for. A team of four was chosen to conduct the meetings: Gregory himself, Mick Rafferty, Fergus McCabe, another social worker, and Noel Gregory, Tony's brother.

Charlie Haughey suggested that the first meeting be held in his home at Kinsealy. The team, with little ennthusiasm for traipsing around a millionnaire mansion, invited Haughey to meet on their ground. He was the one lookking for the meeting, Gregory didn't seek out any politicians for negotiaations. The meeting took place on Tuessday February 25 at 20 Summerhill Parade.

Haughey seemed a little ill at ease at that first meeting but settled down at subsequent negotiations. The team had drawn up a two page document, little more than a series of one-sentence statements outlining the issues on which Gregory had fought the election: education, employment, social wellfare. All of the issues had been central to the activities of the inner city group and ones which for years politicians had been showering with pious phrases and little else.

Haughey declared himself to be very concerned about these issues. He thought they could be dealt with. He would take away the document and come back with a considered response.

This was two days before Dessie O'Malley's attempted ousting of Haugghey and rumours of a coup in Fianna Fail were in the air. The team wonderred if they were wasting their time talkking to Haughey. Might they not have to go through all this with some other Fianna Fail leader in a few days time?

"I am the leader of the Fianna Fail party," said Haughey, seemingly even then supremely confident.

Haughey was not only first off the mark in trying to convince Gregory and his team that a Fianna Fail leader would be accommodating to the needs of the people of the inner city. He was also the only one of the three party leaders who appeared to be taking Gregory seriously.

Michael O'Leary's intervention was confused and inept and inadvertently helped swing Gregory's vote to Haugghey. O'Leary asked for a meeting in Wynn's Hotel, in Abbey Street. At the meeting he appeared to have little hope of returning to government and spoke of how a period in opposition might give the Labour Party a boost of militancy. He appeared to the team to be unsure of his own role in the negotiations and whether he was speaking as a future Tanaiste or as leader of the Labour Party.

Back in the mid-seventies RTE's Seven Days had made a film on inner city problems in conjunction with local activists. One of Gregory's team, Mick Rafferty, had been elected by the North Wall Association as one of those representing local interests in the making of the film. At that time Miichael O'Leary was Minister for Labour and had been interviewed by Rafferty for the film. The issues which the team were putting to O'Leary in Wynn's Hotel were precisely the ones which had arisen in that interview conducted by Rafferty eight years earlier, issues about which he had then expressed great concern. Yet nothing had been done - and the team had the impresssion in Wynn's that O'Leary was unnfamiliar with the issues and was hearring them for the first time.

The team left Wynn's unimpressed and on the spur of the moment deciided to drop in to Liberty Hall, a couple of hundred yards down the road. The inner city activists had orrganised a catering co-op as one of their projects to promote employment and had the use of a room in the union hall. There they met Michael Mullen, General Secretary of the ITGWU ~ Mullen had helped the activists set up the course and was generally sympaathetic to their aims. It was through these activities that he and Gregory had first come into contact.

During that chance meeting the subject of the negotiations with the party leaders came up and Mullen made an offer in passing that if he could be of any help he would be available. Having Mullen as a witness to Haughey's commitments was later to be an important element in connvincing the team to trust Haughey's final deal. If O'Leary hadn't brought the team down to Wynn's Hotel for their abortive meeting it is unlikely that Mullen's involvement would have arisen.

If O'Leary's attempt to influence Gregory's vote was inept and unncertain, Garret FitzGerald's was slow and misdirected. On the day that Hauughey first met Gregory at Summerhill Parade FitzGerald had a four-hour cabinet meeting to decide what channges, if any, could be made in the Buddget. FitzGerald did not meet Gregory until Tuesday March 2, just a week before the vote for Taoiseach.

By then Haughey had responded to Gregory's two-page document with a 4D-page document detailing the conncern he felt for Dublin's problems, and his proposals to remedy them.

Gregory and his team met FitzzGerald in the Taoiseach's office, FitzGerald having to attend a meeting in 'Leinster House. He was handed a copy of the same two-page document which had been given to Haughey. He said that he would consider it and respond.

Meanwhile the team had in tum drawn up another twenty-page docuument in an attempt to pin Haughey down to specific commitments. the issues had broadened from matters purely of interest to inner city people. The team are all committed socialists and, while concentrating on getting commitments on the issues on which Gregory and they had campaigned not just in the election but through the years - were also concerned with broader issues. They included such clauses as the closure of the Curragh detention camp within the year; the establishment of a National Communnity Development Agency, with a fund of £2m, to replace the Combat Poverrty which Haughey had abolished; the setting up of a commission to review the work of the Social Welfare Departtment; an overhaul of the Supplemenntary Welfare System.

The issue of the nationalisation of Clondalkin Paper Mills came up not only because of the team's support for the workers' fight against redundancy but also because of their attitude to natural resources. Haughey indicated that he believed that the plant could be saved without nationalisation - but agreed that if this could not be achievved within three months he would natio nalise.

The major sticking point in the negotiations with Haughey was the chopping of the Eastern By-pass. Haughey indicated that he might have some trouble with his own TDs who supported the scheme - but evenntually that too was agreed.

As one item after another was aggreed Haughey initialled the approppriate paragraph on the documents. Some of the team felt that Haughey was agreeing perhaps too readily to some of the items. For instance, it had to be pointed out that his ready agreement that Dublin Corporation should . get the go-ahead to build 1,600 houses didn't take into account the fact that the Corporation's resourrces were such that they were not capable of building more than about 1,250. Gregory was, during the negootiations with the party leaders, in touch with senior officials in the Corrporation to obtain details on required resources and finances and from this determined the increase in the Corporation's Budget allocation which would be necessary to meet the target of 1,600 houses.

Throughout the negotiations, as one paragraph after another was ticked off, Haughey reiterated the same phrase: "You're pushing an open door."

Garret FitzGerald, meanwhile, was having trouble deciding how he felt about the issues Gregory and his team had outlined. He did not resspond to the two-page document until the afternoon of Saturday March 6, just three days before the vote for Taoiseach.

That Saturday morning there was a meeting in Summerhill Parade of between thirty and forty of the key workers in Gregory's election cammpaign. The team reported back in detail on the progress of negotiations with the party leaders. The meeting ended with a vote of confidence in the negotiating team.

That afternoon FitzGerald arrived down to -Summerhill Parade, commplete with Special Branch escort and accompanied by Jim Mitchell. The meeting lasted three hours and FitzzGerald spent much of it dealing with his attitude to the points on education made in the two-page document. He outlined a number of proposals which met these points but still in the conntext of a raised school age, seemingly assuming that this would be accepttable. His concentration on this issue left little time for discussion of the other issues which the team considered to have a high priority.

FitzGerald agreed other points that had been raised, such as nationalising the controversial Port and Docks site - but the team was less than impresssed by his grasp of what they were after. Haughey seemed to have an overview of the inner city problems and the solutions which would be agreeable to the team. He announced that he would borrow the money necessary to meet the points agreed. It was productive investment and that was what he was about. FitzGerald asked where they thought he could get the money from. The team didn't think it was their job to write his budget. They argued with both leaders that if they didn't invest in housing and employment now they would have to invest in the Department of Justice to deal with the consequences later on.

Haughey was back to Summerhill Parade on Sunday morning with yet another document - this time ten pages, adding further details that nailled the deal down more firmly.

Within an hour of Gregory's first meeting with Haughey, on Tuesday February 23, Gregory had made a call for a socialist alliance of the three SFWP TDs, Jim Kernmy and himself. There were several meetings to disscuss the proposal but the negotiations never seemed to have much substance. Jim Kemmy's insistence that the allliance should make a deal to support a government for a period of a year was incompatible with the view of Gregory and the SFWP that they should vote issue by issue on its merits.

A further meeting with FitzGerald on Monday afternoon was as vague and inconclusive as the first two.

On Monday evening the team beegan the task of going through the mountain of paper which the negootiations had produced. They cobbled together a thirty-page document from the various sheets of paper in the room. Some of the pages were taken direct from Haughey's documents, others from their own - some were their own with Haughey's additions.

So plentiful was the paper and so far had they pushed the open door that some items which Haughey had proposed and which could have been included in the final, signed agreement were forgotten and left out. For innstance, in one document Haughey had proposed to freeze any eIE fare inncreases for the rest of this year. It was passed over in the confusion and left out.

Neither Gregory nor his associates are novices at dealing with politicians.

Over the past decade they have been in constant negotiation with councillors, TDs, Ministers and bureaucrats and are less than trusting in the quick promise. So Gregory, remembering Michael Mullen's offer of help, rang the union leader and asked if he would witness the agreement. Mullen immediately agreed and came down to Summerhill Parade.

There were some pathetic Fine Gael attempts to make up for lost time. On the morning of the vote for Taoiseach a Fine Gael TD rang a member of the team suggesting that Tony Gregory was being set up by the SFWP, that they would hold off their vote until the last minute and somehow get Greegory a bad name. But it was far too late for that kind of thing.

For once, due to a freak result and a second hung Dail, a group of people who had for years fought a hard fight in an area - both geographically and politically - which had got the short end of the stick, found the going easy. They 'merely had to point again at the issues at which they had been pointing for years - and this time they got more than platitudes.

One of the recurring problems which the inner city activists have to deal with is the courts. Someone can't afford something they need, so they shoplift. And sometimes, even for a first offence, the theft draws a three month sentence. And, depending on

the idiosyncrasies of the judge, an appeal can result in the sentence being doubled. The issue was raised with both party leaders, and there was a suggestion that the government should arrange a meeting with the Prisoners' Rights Organisation, and that the meeting would be chaired by Sean MeeBride. FitzGerald and Jim Mitchell didn't see that it could be done. Haugghey baulked - there might be indusstrial action by prison warders if the PRO were involved. But he'd talk to McBride. Haughey was seen to be trying.

On the day of the vote for Taoiiseach, Tuesday March 9, several of Gregory's closest associates arrived at Leinster House. Gregory could get just one person onto the Public Gallery to watch the proceedings and it was aggreed that it was only fair that this perrson should be Gregory's brother, Noel. The other five spent the time having a meal in the Dail restaurant. There they found that they could have a subbsidised meal, four courses for three pounds. They decided that this was a fine thing and maybe now that they knew about it they could bring in some impoverished old people from the inner city for a good feed. And, they wanted to know, what was FitzzGerald going on about - all that stuff about where would he find the money? They had the money to subsidise TDs meals, didn't they? •