Trusting Garret

On the final day of the February 1982 general election campaign Garret FitzGerald went for a quick spin around Dublin's north side. The campaign was winding down and the schedule was light - a few hands to shake, a garda station to visit, some banter with reporters about the previous night's TV debate with Charlie Haughey. And an old folks' home. Garret did the rounds, shaking hands, exchanging quips, posing for photos. Three elderly women gathered him to themselves. They said he was great last night, beat Charlie hollow. Then one of the women announced that she didn't want to see abortion coming in at all. FitzGerald said that he didn't want it either, would see it was kept out. Then the woman said that married women should be kept at home so that young people could get jobs. FitzGerald didn't say anything. He put his hand up to his face and looked down at the woman.

Then the woman pressed on. Unmarried women who have a second child shouldn't get the allowance. FitzGerald almost said something but didn't. The woman said she didn't mind the girl who made the one mistake getting the allowance, but not for the second child. "It makes prostitutes of them." FitzGerald didn't agree with the woman. He couldn't have, unless his public stance for the past twenty years, one of liberalism and compassion, is a fraud. But the pressure was on, next day was polling day, and a vote's a vote. He paused, put his lips together, opened his mouth, said, "I'll note your points." The woman was pleased.

He didn't do anything that most politicians wouldn't have done - bent with the breeze. But Garret FitzGerald didn't come into politics to be like most other politicians. Again and again he has set himself apart as a new broom, a clean sweeper, a breaker of moulds. And in the hundred days since his re-election as Taoiseach he has again and again bent with the breeze, dodged and darted with all the readiness and ineptness of a Charlie Haughey.

Those hundred days were not the traditional honeymoon period allowed a new government so that it can find out where the files are kept and who you ring when you want your state car brought around to the front door. They mark the resumption of government after a short interval by people whose course was supposedly well-mapped. A government formed by people whose catch-cries were "trust" and "consistency" in opposition to the devil himself, C.J. Haughey. And instead of trust and consistency the first hundred days of Garret FitzGerald's resumption of power have been marked by uncertainty, brazen reversal of policy and an attitude towards promises made that would be worthy of a used car dealer.

On the day he appointed his present cabinet Garret FitzGerald called in a TD who was widely expected to receive a post. FitzGerald had already filled all positions, there was nothing for the TD. He sat at his desk, head down, not moving, not saying anything. He was obviously embarrassed, even distraught. The TD couldn't see FitzGerald's eyes but got the impression he was crying. FitzGerald kept his head held down towards his desk. "You're pathetic," said the TD.

After his election in June 1981 FitzGerald found himself under attack by his own parliamentary party for the manner in which he chose his Ministers and his famous advisors. Resolutely he held to his ideals - he would appoint the best people, regardless of hurt feelings or geographical considerations. If the most able people in the country were to be found among his mates in Dublin 4, so be it. He had the nation to think of.

On his resumption of office after the last election FitzGerald promptly reversed this grandiose stand and made his appointments along traditional lines with an eye for the main electoral chance. Neither were the appointments such as to encourage a belief in his consistency. Having widely and repeatedly praised John Bruton to the skies FitzGerald apparently grew weary or wary of Bruton's economic line and demoted him to Industry and Commerce. Several of the other appointments owed more to political expediency (or just plain carelessness) than to thought.

Having made as many promises as were necessary to entice Labour into coalition FitzGerald promptly reneged on them. The Joint Programme produced by the coalition negotiations was itself a negation of several policies on which Fine Gael had been elected - and the policies contained within the programme, having served their purpose by swinging Labour's Limerick conference, were put up on the shelf along with previous Joint Programmes.

For instance, the joint programme contains a specific commitment to improving remedial teaching and pupil-teacher ratios - and remedial teaching and pupil-teacher ratios were the first cuts proposed by the FitzGerald government. Similarly, the £100m to be gathered in capital taxation was a figure plucked from the air and just as easily disposed of when Budget time came around. Labour, yet again, became just another leg of the chair on which Fine Gael sat.

If there was one issue from which FitzGerald built the ladder which led to his return to power it was his reputation for having a realistic attitude to the economy. While Haughey promised airports FitzGerald was "honest" about the "gravity of the problem". In fact, during the 1981 campaign FitzGerald and partners were as profligate in their promises as anyone else. In February 1982, being in government and being caught with his Budget down, FitzGerald could promise little. Last November he simply shut up, refused to answer specific questions about his economic proposals and asked merely that he be trusted.

In the event, his approach in the February Budget while coming from a different direction than Haughey's old devil-may-care approach - was as potentially damaging. The size and scale of the deflation were beyond anything called for even by the most conservative economists. Primarily the Budget was a party political one, aiming to wipe out a massive chunk of the deficit in the early period of the regime so as to enable the government provide appropriate sweeteners in later years as election time approaches. As for the major structural problems which are at the heart of the financial mess - FitzGerald and Dukes simply funked it.

FitzGerald did admit before the last election that he would be attacking living standards. However, again and again he promised that if elected 'he would ensure that those least able to bear the brunt would be protected. Again and again he was asked to specify how this would be done. Again and again he dodged the question. He sought votes and got them on the promise of a vague idealism. In the event, his Budget broke his promise.

For years he peddled the line that the route to redistribution of wealth was through enlarging the cake so everyone got a bigger slice. In Kilkenny in November 1981 he made a speech in which that line changed. While growth was still the aim, the redistribution of wealth and the solving of the massive social problems which exist could not await that growth - it must proceed apace as a matter of principle. The line, apparently, but not terribly surprisingly, appears to have changed again.

In the late 1970s Gemma Hussey was the author of a report on women in television. It was a report widely praised by people who apparently didn't watch television. It certainly had the feel of a report written by someone who didn't watch television. Among the American series slated for sexism were at least two which had made obvious efforts, against pressure from the networks, to combat stereotyping. It was a careless but trendy report, well-received among the careless and trendy.

In her position as Minister for Education Hussey was scarcely less careless, if a good deal less trendy. The cuts proposed ran counter to the oft-repeated Fine Gael claim that sacrifices would be forced on those who could best bear them. The manner and timing of the announcement of the cuts and the treatment of the teaching unions made things worse. The supposed inevitability of the cuts, the righteous statements that they could not be avoided, evaporated as Hussey ran for cover. The promise to review the proposed remedial teaching cuts, previously unavoidable, was made by Hussey when she found herself under pressure on Today Tonight.

FitzGerald's handling of the cuts, while encouraging to those who oppose them, has been politically inept. Hussey, having made the initial announcement on Christmas Eve, was left hanging out to dry. A more orderly presentation of his economic measures would have enabled FitzGerald to at least present some image of a government making a principled and thought-out programme - instead, Hussey was left isolated, fair game for the opposition. And her retreat gave the lie to the righteous claims that the coalition was just doing its unavoidable duty by the national finances.

Garret FitzGerald's feat in building the new Fine Gael over the past five years was one of the most remarkable achievements in Irish parliamentary politics. In 1977 they held just 43 seats, with 30.5% of the vote. By last November they had risen to 70 seats and 39.2% of the vote. The achievement was a deliberate one, carefully conceived and executed. In the first years of his leadership FitzGerald undertook a gruelling trek around the constituencies, part to boost morale, part to encourage changes in organisation. He was also responsible for recruiting to Fine Gael large numbers of young people - this again being part of a long-term strategy. At a meeting of young people in Galway in March of 1978 he told them that he was offering them a real chance to participate in politics.

"You will elect your own youth officers, you will have your own meeting at the Ard Fheis ... you will elect your own representative to the National Executive."

Party structures would be changed so that the youth would be listened to. "To create such a movement and then ignore the pressures it will generate would be foolish and would create cynicism among the young."

Five years later, FitzGerald is into foolishness and creating cynicism among the young. The structures have been created, the youth have been won to the party - their pressures, as expressed in a massive vote against FitzGerald's Constitutional Amendment at the recent youth conference in Galway, are being ignored. FitzGerald's handling of the Amendment issue has been such an obvious cock-up that it hardly needs examination. However, his readiness to twist and turn on such an issue raises questions about his honesty, let alone his sincerity. The Amendment commitment was a promise freely entered into prior to the 1981 election. FitzGerald knew that if he didn't agree to the pressure from the Knights of Columbanus-sponsored campaign he would be in danger of being daubed a baby-murderer while trying to fight an election. (No one could have doubted Haughey's readiness to avoid such pressure.) FitzGerald had a choice. He made it. If a vote is a vote, a promise is a promise.

Subsequently he attempted to put it on the same long finger on which other promises were put. The two subsequent elections put an end to that. When the pressure came on he not only declared that Charlie Haughey's wording couldn't be improved on but gave a date for its implementation. Again, a vote's a vote. In the course of the twists and turns on the Amendment FitzGerald has presided over attacks on institutions which are sacred in the Fine Gael canon. Several members of Fine Gael, having stood foursquare with his pronouncements that every single deputy was committed to the Amendment, and having asked for votes on that basis, have been allowed with impunity reverse that stance.

However, scorn of the democratic process is nothing new and is not confined to Fine Gael. What is new is the equanimity with which FitzGerald greeted his Minister for Justice's attacks on the Supreme Court. On February 9, while addressing the Dáil on the issue of the Amendment, Michael Noonan declared that abortion "should not be permitted to creep into our law." That remark was hedged with pleas of respect for the present members of the Supreme Court. However, the following week, in an interview on Today Tonight Noonan specifically referred to the Supreme Court as a "back door". Mr Noonan has not listed any of the current laws which he finds repugnant for having crept in through the back door of the Supreme Court.

Not a Fine Gael eyelid was batted. We have come a long way since the editor of Hibernia found himself in court under a previous coalition after his journal printed a letter which, in referring to the Special Criminal Court, had the word "trial" in quotation marks.

In the wake of the appointment of FitzGerald's 1981 Cabinet there were more shouts than murmurs among the backbenchers and rank and file of the party over FitzGerald's high-handed treatment of many long-serving TDs. Condemnation of the Dublin 4 set which surrounds FitzGerald was widespread. This time some of the resentment was appeased by a more traditional assignment of posts. (Austin Deasy, who had been openly scathing of FitzGerald's lack of political cop-on, was rewarded with a position.)

However, of late there have been renewed murmurings about elitism and insensitivity to grass root opinion. FitzGerald has tried to alleviate such complaints by chatting up backbenchers. These days he can sometimes be seen in the members' bar in the Dáil, gin and tonic in hand, engaging in something approaching banter with whoever happens to be around. More often than not the effect is depressing and clumsy and he ends up in the corner with the Dublin 4 set. Although FitzGerald was largely successful in grafting his new social democratic version of Fine Gael onto the old party, you can still see the join. Many of the older memben have much to complain about - yet they can't deny the success of his strategy.

Meanwhile, Fianna Fáil have announced that Charlie Haughey is to launch a nine-month tour of constituencies, emulating FitzGerald's feat. Should he be as successful in reviving a stagnant organisation as FitzGerald was we can look forward to a next general election in which there are two major parties engaging in a joust of organisation, of prepackaged policies, of promises carelessly made and as carelessly broken.

It's called keeping the country safe from democracy.