The war in Fine Gael
There were rumours of Trouble before the Fine Gael Parliamentary meeting on Sept 22. It was the first such meeting since the referendum and Tom O'Donnell was said to be preparing an assault on the FitzGerald wing. The meeting opened with Fitzgerald being conciliatory biding wounds, reminding the TDs that there was a real world out there with real problems and it was time to get down to work, to climb every mountain, ford, every stream. The dissident TDs who had walked all over FitzGerald in the Dáil vote on the referendum, sat there when FitzGerald finished. Tom O'Donnell's trouble-making, if there was any planned, never materialised. Alice Glenn sat mute. Not one voice was raised against FitzGerald. The meeting spent two hours discussing the Criminal Justice Bill. By Gene Kerrigan.
The air of triumph among the dissident TDs in the wake of the referendum faded considerably as time went on. Close scrutiny of tallies in some areas showed that a substantial part of the No vote was from Fine Gael supporters. Within Munster there was considerable reaction against Tom O'Donnell in some areas. Alice Glenn has her own problems, heightened by the death of George Colley and the fear that a strong Fine Gael opponent might emerge in the constituency. Oliver J. Flanagan had been making noises about the Fine Gael he knew being dead, but few pay any attention to Oliver these days.
Within the FitzGerald wing of the party there were mixed feelings. Some thought that the dissidents might have failed to put the clock back but they had surely stopped it. Others felt that since the most conservative forces had given the Amendment their best shot - and achieved an ambiguous and disappointing result - the door had been opened for other issues, less emotive, on which there could be cooler debate. The result would, for instance, encourage an earlier decision on divorce.
Overall, there was a feeling that fire should be held for the time being. Issues of morals, sure to provoke conflict; should be left on the back burner.
However, circumstances dictate that the conflict will continue. Marital breakdown has been safely batted away to an interparty committee. That will take a year, then a long time more to consider the report and even longer to do anything. One Fine Gael TD, on the conservative wing but with a realistic view of the need to deal with the problem, reckons it will take seven or eight years.
The divorce issue is on the back burner, but there are others more imminent which are likely to revive the conflict. Nuala Fennell is gearing up for legislation on illegitimacy. More immediate is Michael Noonan's Joint Matrimonial Property Bill, the headings of which have been decided and which is now in preparation.
The demands for such legislation have emerged from the changed nature of Irish society. Fine Gael is the party which most represents that change. It is also the party which has its roots in a conservatism which resists such change.
IN DECEMBER 1980 A ROUTINE MEETING of the Fine Gael parliamentary party had I before it a proposal that the party immediately begin holding selection conventions - to choose candidates in each constituency to contest the general election which must come sometime in the following eighteen months. The TDs considered the matter and rejected the proposal by 42 votes to one. The one being Garret FitzGerald.
Once candidates are chosen in a constituency they all have the same status, whether they are currently TDs or not. And TDs don't like having ambitious young things
hustling around the constituency, shaking hands and getting their names known. Maybe the early selection of candidates would be good for Fine Gael, but it wasn't necessarily good for the Fine Gael TDs - so they said no.
The next day, a meeting of the National Executive of the party voted that selection conventions would begin as soon as possible. And so they did, on January 11 1981. The last of the selection conventions took place two days before Charlie Haughey called the June 1981 general election. Fine Gael had a flying start.
The fact that the National Executive could overrule the TDs in the interests of the party was symptomatic of the major transformation of Fine Gael carried out since 1977, what more than one participant casually describes as the "hi-jacking" of the party. The hi-jacking of the hidebound and somewhat decrepit party was carried out openly and met little resistance. The skirmishes were minor and would only erupt into open war over the issue of the Constitutional Amendment. By then it was too late. The Alice Glenn wing could demand the silencing of Young Fine Gael and that group could in turn openly announce its intention of forcing out the ultra-conservative rump. But that was all mouth. The war in Fine Gael is not fought like that.
FINE GAEL WAS A MICKEY MOUSE PARTY right from the start. The party represented the coming together of three conservative forces that emerged in the wake of the civil war. The National Centre Party was a coalition of a few Independent TDs elected in 1932 from bases of large farmers and pro-Treatyites. The Blueshirts were stormtroopers with soft shoes, a would-be fascist paramilitary group destined to collapse in farce. The most important element was Cumann na nGaedheal.
Cumann na nGaedheal held power throughout the twenties as a result of the outcome of the civil war. They represented stability and an end to the conflict and thus attracted the large farmer and big business support. They also had the advantage of the anti-Treatyites not taking their seats until August 1927.
Having been the natural party of government for a decade the party organisation was weak, centred on the Dáil. Fianna Fáil, having come out of forces that had been on the run for a lot of that time, had a grassroots structure which Cumann na nGaedheal did not have. When Fianna Fáil took power in 1932 the disgruntled conservative forces came together a year later to found Fine Gael, but it remained a top-heavy party, attracting its support on the basis of its conservative stance and without Fianna Fáil's structure and organisation.
It was significant that Fine Gael chose as its first leader General Eoin O'Duffy, leader of the Blueshirts. He was not a TD and his political constituency was ideological rather than electoral.
After a year of O'Duffy's horsing around, and poor results in the local elections of 1934, the Blueshirt was bounced and replaced by W.T. Cosgrave. Even so, it was all downhill for the next fourteen years. In the general election of 1937 Fine Gael got 34% of first preferences; in 1938 it was 33%; in 1943 23%; in 1944 20%. When a collection of small parties cobbled together the Interparty Government of 1948, with Fine Gael's John A. Costello as Taoiseach,
Fine Gael had drawn 19.8% of first preferences, the lowest in its or Cumann na nGaedheal's history.
The fact that the Interparty Government got some useful work done had little to do with Fine Gael. While that government is remembered chiefly for finally declaring a republic its greatest achievement was the work of Noel Browne, a member of Clann na Poblachta, which held ten seats in the Dáil, Browne, as Minister for Health, organised a blitz on tuberculosis, ruthlessly gathering funds and marshalling resources. It was without question the most impressive Ministerial performance in the history of the state. At that stage between three and four thousand people a year were dying from tuberculosis. Browne's campaign virtually eradicated the disease and his speed and efficiency undoubtedly saved many lives.
After three years that government collapsed from a belt of the Bishops' crozier when Browne tried to bring in the Mother and Child Bill. The experience ended Browne's Ministerial career but it didn't do Fine Gael much harm. At the subsequent election they increased their percentage of first preferences to 25%. In 1954 they participated in another Interparty Government, a dismal affair that lasted another three years and which isn't remembered for anything in particular.
Fianna Fáil resumed office in 1957 and would hold it for sixteen years, matching the sixteen year stretch from 1932 to 1948. In the elections during this period Fine Gael's share of the vote rose, settling at 35% in 1973. Fianna Fáil maintained its share during this period, averaging 46%. It was the Independents and small parties who took a hammering and whose support drifted to Fine Gael.
Between 1932 and 1973 Fine Gael had held a handful of Ministerial positions in two cobbled-together governments over a total of six years. Their achievements were miniscule and despite all the posturing about "grand old men" they had attracted few people of genuine talent. The grand old men had grown old and frustrated in irrelevancy. It was a miserable little party.
DURING THE LATE SIXTIES EVERYONE seemed to be going liberal. Even the Knights of Columbanus went through a short liberal phase, eschewing their ultra-secretiveness, scrapping their robes and turning to charitable work. Within Fine Gael there arose a phenomenon which became known as The Young Tigers. This was an attempt by some young members of the party to align Fine Gael with the perceived public mood of social reform. In 1964 Declan Costello had produced his "Just Society" document and he and Garret FitzGerald had led the argument against the tight-lipped Liam Cosgrave wing. Cosgrave was never in any trouble.
The main push from the liberals came at the 1969 Ard Fheis and failed. The liberals were naive, with pious aspirations but no muscle. James Dillon, the party's "grand old man", was brought out to put the liberals in their place. He instanced the activities of some nice, obedient and conservative young people in the party as the kind of thing which he would like to see increase. These he called "the young tigers" which every party needs. The label was applied by Dillon to the, young conservatives in the party, but apparently the political correspondents were either tired or emotional that day and they attached the name to the young liberals - and it stuck.
The liberals were hammered, some expelled. Few "young tigers" remain active in politics. However, the liberal wing, led by FitzGerald, almost had its day in December 1972. Dessie O'Malley was bringing in the Offences Against The State (Amendment) Bill. It was a vicious piece of work which allowed that if a Garda Superintendent said you were guilty of membership of an illegal organisation you were so guilty - without any other evidence. (The Bill not only degraded the judicial process but helped rationalise the IRA. In those days they stood on ceremony and had all sorts of silly rules under which they didn't recognise courts and wouldn't deny membership. O'Malley's Bill was one of the things that helped them smarten up and become more professional about things like that.)
Liam Cosgrave licked his lips and rowed in behind O'Malley. Fine Gael was in turmoil, with even Paddy Cooney lambasting the Bill. Cosgrave was poised to betray the parliamentary party and the FitzGerald wing was poised to take it over in the wake of that betrayal. That night two bombs went off in Dublin and the liberalism disappeared. Everyone marched into the lobby behind Cosgrave.
FOR FINE GAEL THE SEVENTIES WERE the best of times and the worst of times. Fianna Fáil's monopoly of the nationalist card had served it well down the years. Now, when the blood began flowing in the North its nationalist image rebounded on the party. Faced with living up to its rhetoric the party split in two. Yet its vote held, its percentage of first preferences slightly increasing in 1973.
Two significant developments ensured that Liam Cosgrave would in March 1973 - forty years after the party was founded - be the first leader of Fine Gael to become Taoiseach. (During the Interparty Governments the party leader, General Richard Mulcahy, was unacceptable as Taoiseach because of his role in the civil war - that's how much the leadership of Fine Gael meant back then.)
The first development was the consolidation of the anti-Fianna Fáil vote behind Fine Gael and Labour. In previous decades the small party and Independent vote had at times amounted to over 25%, and never dropped below 12%. In the mid-Sixties that vote drained away and by 1973 it was only 5%.
The second was the success in arranging transfers between Fine Gael and Labour. The transfer rate from Fine Gael to Labour was 71% and transfers in the other direction ran at 72% - in each case more than doubling the figures from the previous election.
Liam Cosgrave was Taoiseach - and the stolid, sober, stern face of Fine Gael conservatism risked a tiny smile. At a parliamentary party meeting only three months earlier Garret FitzGerald had proposed the removal of Cosgrave because of his behaviour over the Offences Against The State (Amendment) Act - and failed miserably. Now, the liberals were quiescent.
In Fine Gael the terms "liberal" and "conservative" are relative and not necessarily appropriate in general political terms. For instance, while it was generally known that on a systematic basis heads were being thumped and genitals squeezed in garda station basements during 1976 and 1977 not one Minister or TD in the party dared raise a public objection - FitzGerald made his reservations known privately, for what that was worth. Labour's Frank Cluskey, as a parliamentary secretary, made a name for himself reforming social welfare - but that was about it.
Despite the presence of the supposed "liberal intellectuals" the Coalition was fashioned in the image of Liam Cosgrave - reactive, unimaginative, ruthlessly protective of dogma.
The optimism with which the Coalition greeted Sunningdale and the Northern Executive compounded the pessimism which followed its collapse. The harsh "law and order" policies which followed consolidated the party's conservative base - and consolidated IRA support in turn. Economic recession turned the screw.
The political ancestors of Cosgrave and his Fine Gael Ministers - and in some cases their actual ancestors - had formed the first governments of the state and had shaped it politically and culturally. Then, in 1932 it was cruelly taken away from them. For forty years, apart from a couple of political hiccups during which they got to handle a few Departments, they had stood on the sidelines cherishing their conservative values, brooding in stagnancy and politically representing stagnancy. Now, in their hour of glory things were coming apart.
In the Ireland of the Seventies people were not so much demanding contraceptives as making their own arrangements to use them, regardless of the state. When in 1976 the Coalition moved to bring the law into line with reality Cosgrave petulantly voted against his own government's Bill. Had he acted with political skill rather than petulance he could at least have taken more of his Cabinet with him. A few years later Alice Glenn would prove a master strategist in comparison with Cosgrave. But Cosgrave was not so much a politician as a mood.
That same year Paddy Donegan insulted the President and Cosgrave dug his heels in again. Faced with a choice between Constitutional propriety and loyalty to his comrade in conservatism, Cosgrave remained stony-faced until the President resigned. The following year, at the party Ard Fheis, Cosgrave erupted in a violent, arrogant and threatening tirade against the "blow-ins" who would dare question him or his political tradition. The Ard Fheis exploded in cheering and in the subsequent general election in June of that year Fine Gael got the lowest level of electoral support it had received since 1957.
FOR THE FINAL RALLY OF THE 1981 general election campaign Garret FitzGerald entered Cavan town on the back of a pony and trap, crowds cheering. His left hand was in plaster since he fell off a chair just before the election and broke a bone. When the pony panicked and the trap rocked and swayed FitzGerald grabbed a rail with his right hand. After a few seconds he had to let go. The hand was swollen and unusable after three weeks of shaking hands. He clung on by his elbows until the pony was calmed.
It was worth it. That campaign marked the end of four years of consistent work by FitzGerald - not so much to rouse Fine Gael as to create it.
There is a myth that FitzGerald is a bad campaigner, that he is uneasy with the rigmarole of elections. In fact, he likes it and is very good at it. It's true that there are some things he still hasn't got the hang of - like waving; he puts his arm up in an L shape and wiggles it - but he knows how to pull the crowd-pleasing strokes and is more capable of making a spontaneous and hilarious speech from the back of a lorry than Charlie Haughey. The myth was created by journalists who like the nutty professor image and look for the things which support it.
The other myth is that FitzGerald is a sensitive soul who isn't cut out for the rough and tumble of politics. He is quite ruthless and couldn't have carried out the transformation of 1977-81 without that quality.
FitzGerald's main scalpel in the political surgery which took place after he took the leadership in June 1977 was Peter Prendergast. Prendergast's other main organisational achievement was the creation of a market for Yoplait yoghurt. Today, one rural TD can without personal animosity judge that "if Peter Prendergast came down here tomorrow he would be lynched".
Fine Gael in 1977 was a collection of TDs, most quite skilled at vote-gathering, who had little central organisation and little desire for one. TDs had personal followings and usually joined parties from family tradition and to get the natural lump of support which went to that party. Mostly success depended - and still to a large extent depends - on constituency work. Prior to 1966 political parties weren't mentioned on ballot papers.
Fine Gael TDs had little incentive to build the party. A larger party would take away from their power and the activists so created would be a threat to their seats. The incentive to build so that the party could take power and so increase their influence and patronage was negligible was for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael's traditional role was in opposition.
Prendergast visited every constituency and appointed in each a constituency organiser and a PRO. He chose a high proportion of teachers - partly because they had administrative experience, partly because they usually had access to resources like typewriters and photocopy machines.
Membership cards were introduced. This had the obvious advantage of establishing how many members there were and where they were. It also cut down the practice of TDs creating paper branches. Admission to party events, including social activities, was by membership card, providing an incentive for passive supporters to get involved.
The other main initiative was the change in the party constitution carried through at the 1978 Ard Fheis. This was guided through by Jim Dooge. The rules were changed to give lay members control of the National Executive. Party officers at local level would now have to be democratically elected - no bloc selection. No officer could retain the same position for more than three years - previously the same people had remained for twenty or thirty years, or had died yet remained on the books at headquarters. Automatic elections each year meant that useless officers could be removed with the least upset to .the ego, without having to stage an election specially. TDs would have to go for renomination in competition with everyone else.
The TDs and the traditional party followers didn't put up much resistance. For the TDs there would be an extra 16 seats in an enlarged Dáil after the next election and you'd have to be a right duffer not to get back. Older members were only too pleased to let the new young enthusiasts run around organising, photocopying and licking envelopes. They could enjoy the party social life and retain their delegate positions for the important meetings.
Garret FitzGerald visited every constituency, boosting morale, recruiting, explaining the new plans, discussing problems where necessary. There were deliberate strategies of recruiting young people and women, constituencies which had grown in awareness and activity over the previous decade but which had been neglected by the parties.
The constituency organisers, having been recruited by Prendergast, in turn did their own recruiting, appointing organisers in the branches. The constituency organisers were brought to Dublin on a regular basis for discussion with Prendergast, for instructions and for training. Where some individual in a constituency started giving trouble and couldn't be argued out of it Prendergast set about cutting away his local support.
There were problems in several counties. In Roscommon, for instance, while FitzGerald was making his second round of visits to constituencies, the local TD, Joan Burke, was excluded from a press conference. There was local reaction, a belief that the slick new crowd were freezing her out. Rather than compete for a nomination in 1981 Burke resigned from politics.
The Constituency PRO in Roscommon, John Connor, appointed by Prendergast, made no secret of his ambition to win a seat. There was a rule that constituency organisers and PROs, because of their prominence, could not stand for a seat at the subsequent election - without this rule the TDs would never have cooperated. Suddenly, the new people whom Connor and the constituency organiser, Mark Kennedy, had brought in - many with no Fine Gael pedigree, their families being Clann na Poblachta or even Fianna Fáil - were becoming delegates. Connor claimed he had never wanted to be PRO, had only taken the job because there was no one else, and wanted to stand for nomination despite the rules. A page of the minutes where Connor had been appointed PRO allegedly went missing. Prendergast backed Connor, saying he had merely been Acting PRO and had not been ratified. The selection convention in 1981 went on until 3am amid chaos and threats. Connor won the seat in 1981. In 1982 he lost it to Liam Naughten, a long serving Fine Gaeler who had taken the short end of the ticket in 1977 to help the party when there was little in it for himself. There is now a sharp split in Fine Gael in Roscommon, the newer members supporting Connor, the traditional Fine Gaelers supporting Naughten.
Similar controversies erupted in several constituencies, but the reorganisation was overwhelmingly successful. The TDs cooperated more than might have been expected, perhaps impressed by FitzGerald's enthusiasm. FitzGerald's image helped win many to the party who wouldn't have joined in Cosgrave's time. In 1979 FitzGerald used the Euro and local elections to push into the public eye many of the new faces. Alan Dukes, Nuala Fennell (who previously had run as Independent), Monica Barnes, Maurice Manning, Gay Mitchell, Richard Bruton, Mary Flaherty, George Bermingham, Hugh Coveney, Bernard Allen, Madeline Taylor, Ivan Yates and Brendan MacGahon all had their first run for Fine Gael then.
One other important change was the recognition of the need to get the urban vote. Previously, every branch had the same number of delegates to conventions and Ard Fheisanna, regardless of the size of the branch, although an urban branch might have many times the number of members that the scattered rural branches had. By weighting the representation according to population this was changed and the organisation itself became more urban.
The combination of FitzGerald's image and the organisational changes transformed the party. At headquarters a shoal of whizzkids were brought in to package the election campaigns. The early selection of candidates, forced
through by the National Executive despite the TDs, was crucial. It gave candidates time to become known and gave the organisation time to work out the kinks. The fact that the candidates were out shaking hands early in 1981 brought further pressure on Haughey to call an early election. When it came, Fianna Fáil had to choose all its candidates within a few days.
The 6% increase in first preferences in 1981 is deceptive.
Similar swings in the past had produced an extra nine or ten seats. So well managed was the party in dividing up the vote that this time it brought an extra 22 seats. By the November 1982 election FitzGerald's momentum had carried the party from 30% of the vote and 43 seats in 1977, to 39% and 70 seats. The majority of members were new and half had joined in the previous two years.
CHARLIE HAUGHEY SAID HE DIDN'T trust Garret FitzGerald to bring in the Constitutional ban on abortion. It was the November 1982 election and that was the kind of thing Charlie tends to say, so no one took him very seriously. FitzGerald reiterated his commitment to the Referendum and gave a date for bringing in the Bill. In the brief period at the beginning of the campaign when Haughey tried to make an issue of the Amendment the Fine Gael candidates loyally went out and stood on the backs of lorries and swore blind their party's commitment on the issue.
When, a few months later, FitzGerald was expressing his reservations there was a shortage of sympathy for him within the parliamentary party. "You can't make a promise like that and then come back into a rural constituency and say you've changed your mind. He should have come right back after the election and brought it in immediately, got shut of it."
The conflict between the old Fine Gael and the new had been sporadic and muted during the major changes. Now it was open. It wasn't primarily a matter of ideology, but of approach to politics. Alice Glenn has a deep-rooted conservatism. Godfrey Timmons agonised over the issue. Beyond them there are varying reasons for the actions of the dissident TDs. Both Tom O'Donnell and Oliver J. Flanagan have a personal dislike - to put it mildly - of FitzGerald. Other TDs took a long cold look at their electoral bases. Even Oliver Flanagan, although he would probably have opposed FitzGerald just for the sake of it, had an eye to his constituency. At one parliamentary party meeting he exploded: "And I'll tell you this - at the next election I'll get more votes than ever!"
When FitzGerald opened up the party it was a genuine openness. The old days when TDs called meetings with letters sent from the Dáil are gone. Now the meetings are called by party officers in the constituency and if the TDs don't attend that's too bad, the meeting goes ahead and makes decisions. The party couldn't have grown and attracted talent without giving party members some role. That openness has forced up through the party issues and attitudes which represent real conflicts of interests and which reflect the uneven development both within the party and within society itself.
The bulk of the new recruits are middle class. Conservative on many issues, liberal on some. Those who live in urban areas see little fault in abolishing illegitimacy. In a rural area the prospect of a knock on the door from the product of a liaison in a ditch twenty years ago, demanding parity with the "legitimate" offspring, is likely to create havoc. Opposition to such legislation will be called Defending The Family. If the measure was being brought forward by Michael Noonan, as a matter of Justice, some of the opposition might be soothed. If, as seems likely, it is Nuala Fennell who is bringing it forward the hackles of some will automatically raise.
Even more likely to arouse trouble is the Joint Matrimonial Property Bill, which will probably arrive in the Dáil session after next. This will decree that all property within the home is jointly owned by husband and wife. When Noonan first raised the matter at a parliamentary party meeting there were mutterings about "expropriating a man's property". The liberals may push that the measure go beyond the home and cover joint ownership of land. That will create even more conflict. Many TDs will be taking a manly attitude.
Opposition to such measures is likely to go beyond the supporters of the rather academic Amendment. And beside such issues of property, the potential for trouble from Barry Desmond's proposed reform of contraception facilities seems small.
FROM NEXT MONTH FINE GAEL AND Labour will hold joint parliamentary party meetings. TDs from one party will then be able to question Ministers from the other party. Fine Gael and Labour are working hand in glove.
The normally expected reaction from Fianna Fáil to such conflicts as are due is the one they adopted during the Amendment debate - sit tight, say nothing. Charlie Haughey's leadership, like Liam Cosgrave's, is reactive, not innovative. It is a line that is increasingly hard to follow. Fianna Fáil needs the city votes which Fine Gael has won. Already Michael Woods and Tras Honan have made vaguely liberal noises.
The decision to sit tight and let Fine Gael tear itself to shreds over the Amendment may not, in the long run, have been the right one. As, increasingly, the issues of the day are fought out within Fine Gael rather than between it and Fianna Fáil the latter smells of stagnancy. A long row of heads nodding in time to Charlie's beat presents an image of weakness rather than strength. But allowing differences to emerge would bring pressure for a free vote. And that would help Fine Gael out of its difficulties when its two wings clash.
Fianna Fáil sits tight. Labour props up Fine Gael. Fine Gael tries to find a compromise between the old and the new. Young Fine Gael can't kick out the conservative rump - they're needed for electoral purposes. The conservative rump can't shut up Young Fine Gael without tearing apart the party and pushing it back to the miserable state of the Fifties. Garret FitzGerald has said privately that Young Fine Gael will be shut up "over my dead body". Alice, Tom and Oliver might like to arrange that, but their prospects are poor.