A closet Fianna Failer who had a sneaking regard for Haughey
Broadcaster’s politics were difficult to pin down, but he was a Eurosceptic in later years, writes Eoin O’Malley
THE death of Gay Byrne was met with universal sadness and a recognition of his brilliance as a broadcaster. Byrne, all agreed, was central to politics. And he was seen as a positive, modernising force. He pushed society along in ways that seemed less threatening, and even as recently as in the samesex marriage referendum, canvassers reported that Gay Byrne’s endorsement helped them convince more than a few people that the change wasn’t the threat they might have thought it would be.
By raising issues Byrne could turn the focus of the nation on to things it sometimes didn’t want to see. And it could move Government in double quick time. When he was Taoiseach, Charles Haughey would listen to The Gay Byrne Show on his way into Government Buildings each morning. His private office would listen too, because it knew that when the Boss arrived, he’d ask about some matter or other that was raised on the show, and they’d have taken the initiative by ringing a relevant department for its view.
For politicians, Byrne could give you a leg up, or put the boot in. Byrne’s treatment of Padraig Flynn on his infamous Late Late Show appearance looked like that of an old friend, but he tempted Flynn to emphasise and re-emphasise his lack of self-awareness when he said how hard it was keeping three houses. Byrne’s charm meant that everyone thought he was their friend, and this could lull them into revealing more than they should have.
His power is hard to overestimate, especially for people who don’t remember a media environment where there were just two legal radio stations and two TV channels. His radio show was a bit like having Ryan Tubridy, Sean O’Rourke, Pat Kenny, Twitter and Facebook rolled into one, but all curated by one person.
But there was no discussion of his own politics. They were hard to pin down. He was the liberal who introduced sex to Ireland, and the conservative who could make snide, misogynistic remarks to Bishop Eamonn Casey’s lover, suggesting she lured him into a trap.
But what party was he? RTE broadcasters can’t be aligned to a party, but many of us have suspicions about certain ones. Ryan Tubridy was born of Fianna Fail royalty. It was always assumed Gay Byrne was Fianna Fail. His working-class Dublin background would suggest they should be his politics.
Fianna Fail turned to him in 2011 when it was seeking a presidential candidate to support. He briefly considered running, but wondered aloud whether the people really wanted someone like him. A poll at the time suggested he was exactly what they wanted. It gave him a clear majority of support, but that might have waned as the campaign would reveal more of the candidate than the candidate might want to reveal. As a skilled interviewer and broadcaster, he probably knew that more than most.
It was then that Byrne revealed something of his Euroscepticism, his view that Ireland was being “run by mad people in Brussels”. A few in
Fianna Fail thought that the man with his finger on the pulse of the nation might have detected, or even could create, a trend in the nation, though Micheal Martin might have been relieved that Byrne didn’t accept the offer. The other candidates in the field, especially Michael D Higgins must have been mightily relieved.
So Byrne’s sense of what Ireland wanted was hardly unerring. In 2016 he said “when I first started to give my anti-EU feelings, 10 or at least five years ago, I was written off as a noodlehead… It is heartening to realise that at least half of the population of the country now agree with me and certainly over half of the population of the UK agree with me”. I’m not sure how he thought half the country was anti-EU, but there was no clamour for his suggestion that Ireland might follow the UK out of the EU.
If he disliked the EU in his later years, he despaired of
Irish governments throughout the 1980s.
Byrne was heavily political in his criticism of “the lot of them” that had banjaxed the country. On air he would advise people to emigrate because the country was a mess, and then would despair when he was accused of being gloomy. He was particularly critical of Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and the finance minister Alan Dukes. Byrne admitted having a sneaking regard for Charles Haughey, and in 1986 said he hoped there wouldn’t be another coalition because Ireland needed “strong government”. At the time this was as good as saying vote Fianna Fail.
Though he was hardly an old-school republican. Byrne was in such despair he even thought there was something in the idea of handing Ireland back to the Queen.
It was Todd Andrews, a founder of Fianna Fail, and the chair of the RTE Authority in the 1960s, who wanted to sack Byrne. On his first day in his role, Andrews is said to have phoned the RTE Director General Kevin McCourt and demanded that he ‘fire that f**ker Byrne’. One can only wonder what offence Byrne might have been guilty of. But it goes to show, in life, no media people will be universally popular with politicians.