Politics

Gene Kerrigan visited two routine party functions and found the vote-getting machines well oiled.

When Sexual Politics was published in 1969, Kate Millett provided a backbone of theory to the emerging feminist movement in the United States. She analysed the whole social fabric and human behaviour in terms of the effects of long established patriarchy. Since then she has written several other books and been involved in several civil rights movement~ throughout the world.

When I was ushered into Governor Reagan's office I was mildly shocked. He was wearing lipstick, a heavy coat of pancake make-up on his face and rouge on his cheeks. He looked as if he could have been in drag moments before my arrival, but had slipped out of his dress and into a well tailored, navy blue suit for our meeting.   

Those who waited for ten years for the new beginning with Charlie Haughey, must have begun to wonder by now what the long wait was all about. In the seven months since he has become Taoiseach, Charles Haughey has failed to make any significant impact, on any of the issues on which he was most looked to for leadership and change: the economy, the North and security. But worse than that, he has revealed himself as a weak leader who mistakes public relations gimmicks, for decisiveness and courage.

Donncha 0 Dulaing was in his element. The centre of attention, thousands cheering. The leader hearing his every word.

"Every year at Siamsa Cois Laoi I do something out of the ordinary! Two years ago I had the distinction of being called a republican by the Irish Times! Well, since this is a republic I suppose we must all be republicans!"

The thousands of individual sounds rose up out of the crowds, merging to become an aural steam rising into the high rafters of the main hall of the RDS. It was 6.45 pm, thirty minutes to go. Paddy Power was babbling on endlessly about fishing, but not too many cared. Delegates came to the rostrum; their speeches lost in the hubbub, got their perfunctory applause and returned to their seats. 7.07 pm and the crowd was growing restless, the occasional yelp skimming through the air towards the platform.

Michael O'Riordan of the Communist Party of Ireland is the longest serving general secretary of any communist party in Europe. He has uncritically supported a pro-Soviet line on every major issue which partly accounts for his party's poor success here.

GARRET FITZGERALD has been one of the most outstanding individuals to enter public life in Ireland. He is a man of enormous intellectual capacity, boundless energy, high integrity and great generosity. Since he became leader of Fine Gael immediately after the 1977 general election he has revived remarkably, the fortunes of his party which in that election, were at their lowest ebb for over 30 years.

While the termination of Mary Holland's contract as Dublin correspondent of The Observer after 11 years covering Irish affairs for the paper has inevitably attracted most attention in the media there are signs that The Observer's journalists are now limbering up for a major confrontation with the Cruiser on his increasingly imperial interpretation of his role as Editor in Chief.

How a cabal of backbench rural TDs toppled the Fianna Fail party establishment and installed as Taoiseach a man whose political career seemed dead twice in the last decade.