High-fiving Gaybo’s memory isn’t enough

The Gay Byrne legend threatens to bury the truth, of losing as well as winning, and of choosing to fight, writes Gene Kerrigan

THE legend of Gay Byrne is one of a noble warrior of modernisation. It tells of how he single-handedly in the 1960s and 1970s took on the fuddy-duddy traditionalists, karate-chopped the bishops and ran rings around the politicians.

The legend would have us believe that Uncle Gaybo set free generations of young people who couldn’t wait to get their hands on condoms, so they could get divorced and demand an abortion.

That kind of superhero scenario is not how things work, at any time, anywhere.

Gay Byrne was clear-eyed about his role in Irish life, and would have been the first to scorn that legend.

The truth is that Byrne was an intelligent, talented conservative who saw the virtues of tolerance.

The legend ignores the truths about how Byrne and the future were too often betrayed by people concerned mostly about their own career path or commercial interests.

When The Late Late Show began in 1962, the country was economically and socially stagnant, isolated and inbred. A wide range of moral corruption hid behind an extravagant display of religiosity.

The Dail was dominated by old men who treasured that stagnancy. They had taken the country away from the Brits, and were happy with what they’d done with it. Deferring to your elders was obligatory in de Valera’s Ireland, no matter how daft those elders might be. Gay Byrne was not a dissenter, but he was tolerant of those who were. And change was beginning — from above.

Taoiseach Sean Lemass was urging economic change; Charlie Haughey, Brian Lenihan and Donogh O’Malley were the cabinet’s chief modernisers.

Haughey brought in a wave of overdue social reforms. O’Malley forced education change. Lenihan ended the book censorship that had sought — quite successfully — to limit knowledge of the outside world.

The very invention of television, and its arrival here, stirred things up — much as social media has more recently done.

It was in this atmosphere that Gay Byrne initially blossomed. He was given a summer stopgap show, of live entertainment and chat. And one of the things people were chatting about around the country was the changes happening, and other changes needed.

Byrne didn’t see why that chat shouldn’t be reflected in his show.

He was a practising Catholic, a family man, close to major Fianna Fail figures, and economically conservative. He was no libertine, he wasn’t an oppressed woman or a homosexual seeking rights, he wasn’t suffering the bigotry that oppressed Travellers, and he certainly didn’t want a divorce.

But Byrne saw there were people concerned about such things, and more. And he thought it important that people be free to talk about the changes they wanted, and didn’t want.

Byrne’s attitude came naturally to him — tolerate debate, don’t be afraid of it. When this was too much for some, he stood his ground. He won some, and he lost some.

He provided a platform for people demanding social change from below. But he could do that only because those people had independently started that fight for change.

If Byrne was a hero of those days, all the more so was — for instance — Brian Trevaskis, a TCD student. He went on the show and denounced money wasted on Galway Cathedral, in a country racked with poverty. He was right — the Cathedral was a monument to the ego of the bishops, and the docility of the laity.

Trevaskis questioned whether the bishops understood the Christianity they claimed to represent.

To be heard, Trevaskis needed the tolerant Byrne. And to generate debate, Byrne needed the likes of the radical Trevaskis — and all of those who, like Trevaskis, dissented from the complacent consensus.

Such debate was, of course, good for Byrne’s TV ratings. He steered proceedings so successfully that he didn’t finish presenting that 1962 summer stopgap show until 37 years later.

The legend suggests that The Late Late Show tolerance of discussion about change was resisted mainly by mad bishops and political cranks. It was far wider than that.

Byrne was just one element within RTE treated with suspicion by the establishment. RTE management was forever looking over its shoulder at its political masters, aware that their tolerance of dissent was very small.

And the politicians were always ready to listen to the concerns of commercial interests.

One of the big rows was over a show called Home Truths, which took a stand with the public against those who would rip them off, and which was scrupulously fair.

Business types attacked the show and defeated it.

Over a decade later, similar types would stymie Gay Byrne’s pricecomparison “shopping basket” feature on his radio show.

In such fights, RTE senior management usually sided with those who wanted to suppress the impudent talent. After the papal visit of 1979, the forces of political Catholicism launched a fight to regain ground lost over the previous 15 years. The chosen issue was abortion.

Within RTE, senior management were very sensitive.

So much so that they issued a directive banning any appearance on radio or TV of June Levine, a feminist who had written a book, in which she discussed abortion (and who had worked as a Late Late researcher).

The establishment growled when Byrne interviewed a British journalist who spoke about her abortion. There was little public demand for discussion of the issue, so Byrne let it lie.

Then, politicians panicked and began to compete in piety, fearing the political Catholicism activists would denounce them. They agreed to put an abortion ban into the Constitution.

The Late Late Show had staged a debate on entering the EU, with lawyers questioning witnesses, and speakers for and against. Byrne decided that format should be used in discussing the abortion amendment.

The establishment stopped the debate, on the grounds that The

Late Late Show was light entertainment.

The show was much, much more than that, and would attract a far greater level of interest than any current affairs show — but the word was out.

The chairman of the

RTE Authority was Fred O’Donovan, a show business producer, who had got the appointment from Fianna Fail, on their last day in power in 1981. He had no role in such matters, but he intervened and RTE senior management rowed in behind the rest of the establishment.

Those who two decades earlier had welcomed the role of Byrne in raising the level of discussion of important public issues were now among those who saw popular debate as potentially dangerous.

Times had moved on.

The widespread demand for change — among a range of interests that stretched from feminists and gays to industrialists and cabinet ministers — had waned.

Now, political Catholicism was retrenching, again demanding that its beliefs should be enshrined in law. And the new establishment was bowing to that.

It would be 30 years, and new eras of change, before the Eighth Amendment would be removed.

Byrne once filled a studio with Travellers, and interviewed feminists who boasted they had that day illegally imported contraceptives. A young, tolerant Gay Byrne might today fill a studio with homeless people, and hear their story. Or people from a direct provision centre.

Those who high-five Gaybo’s memory have done little to emulate his finest hours.

‘Politicians panicked and began to compete in piety’