NECESSITY AND OPPORTUNITY MAKE FOR ODD BEDFELLOWS
Political opportunity and political necessity are powerful influences on political attitudes. In the light of our own political history, no government combination should ever be ruled out if their numbers are right to secure power.
When Charles Haughey failed to secure an overall majority in the 1989 general election, the Fine Gael leader Alan Dukes offered to support Fianna Fáil in a coalition government in which each party would share the cabinet seats equally, and the position of Taoiseach would rotate between the two party leaders after two years.
Following the 1989 election Haughey was under strong internal party pressure for having called an unnecessary general election in a misjudged effort to secure an overall majority. He might well have agreed to such a pact with Fine Gael in order to retain power for another two years, but there was another possibility.
The Progressive Democrats (PDs), who had originally come together as a party to block Charlie Haughey, now just happened to have won six seats, which was the exact number that Haughey needed for an overall majority, if the independent sitting Ceann Comhairle, Seán Tracy, was left in position.
The PDs had been the biggest losers in 1989, having lost eight of its sixteen seats, which was four more than Haughey’s Fianna Fáil, the second-biggest loser. But it still had 77 seats. Seeing a chance for power, the PDs swallowed their detestation of Haughey and offered to back him at the head of a coalition government.
Having essentially been set up to keep Haughey out of power, backing him was so fundamental a change that no combination should ever again be ruled out, if the numbers are right.
Looking back in 2020 to the general election of 1992, there is an even greater reminder of the changeability of politics in Kerry, because there is not even a Labour Party candidate in the county. Most older Kerry people, especially Labour Party supporters, will have fond memories of 1992, in which the great political phenomenon was “the Spring Tide” that swept the party its record total of 33 Dáil seats under the leadership of Kerry’s Dick Spring.
Early in that campaign, Mr Spring announced he would be looking for an agreement to rotate the office of Taoiseach as Labour’s price for going into coalition with any party. This certainly caught the media’s attention, as was evident from extra reporters assigned to cover Spring’s campaign, along with the presence of RTÉ and BBC television crews.
Despite the extensive media coverage that Spring was attracting, RTÉ confined the party leaders’ television debate of 1992 to the Taoiseach Albert Reynolds and Fine Gael leader John Bruton.
The Labour Party threatened court action to have its leader included in the debate, but dropped this demand when RTÉ offered to have Brian Farrell conduct a separate interview with Dick Spring.
This became all the more ironic when Mr Spring was widely viewed as the real winner of the debate from which he was excluded: “Reynolds pips it – but Spring’s real winner,” the Irish Independent headlined its debate report next morning. The Labour leader was perceived the winner because of his exclusion from the debate.
Immediately after the debate, the Labour aide Fergus Finlay telephoned to ask what Dick thought of the programme. His wife, Kristie, answered and said that Dick was asleep. “Within two minutes of the start of the debate,” she said, “he had fallen asleep in his armchair.” That answered all the likely questions.
Labour had already backed Fine Gael in five different governments, and Labour supporters justifiably thought it was reasonable to ask Fine Gael to exchange the top spot for a period, especially when the polls indicated that Spring was by far the most popular of all the party leaders. Going into the final week of the campaign he enjoyed a favourable rating of 67 per cent, which contrasted starkly with 31 per cent for John Bruton, and only 25 per cent for Albert Reynolds.
It also seemed that a majority of the electorate, some 56 per cent, felt the leader of the largest party in a coalition should not necessarily be Taoiseach. Some 59 per cent of Fine Gael supporters agreed with this thinking, which suggested that Fine Gael supporters would have little problem with the idea of rotating Taoiseach.
As it turned out Fine Gael and Labour did not have enough votes to form a coalition government on their own, so they would need the support of the Progressive Democrats (PDs) with their six seats. This was out because the PDs were almost toxic in the eyes of some Labour deputies.
There was another scenario that became much more palatable — the Labour Party could coalesce with Fianna Fáil. Many people may have dismissed this idea as unthinkable, because it seemed so unprecedented, but Fianna Fáil had offered to back the Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson for the top job in 1927.
This was just days after Eamon de Valera led Fianna Fáil into the Dáil for the first time. He offered to support what was being called the Triple Alliance for the duration of that Dáil. In return for a promise to abolish the detested Treaty-oath,
Fianna Fáil offered to support a minority government, led by Labour with the support of the National League Party, which was the remnants of the old Irish Parliamentary Party of Charles Stewart Parnell and John Redmond.
Even the Cumann na nGaedheal government believed that Johnson had the necessary votes to win on August 16, 1927, but one of the National League members – John Jinks of Sligo – walked out of the Dáil just before the vote and went home. As a result the vote of no confidence in WT Cosgrave’s government ended in a tie, and the Speaker broke the tie by voting for Cosgrave, thus saving the government. The fifth Dáil promptly adjourned for the summer recess, and never met again. It was the shortest Dáil in history. During the recess, Cosgrave called another general election and won enough seats to form a stable government.
In 1932 Labour repaid Fianna Fáil by backing de Valera’s successful bid to form a minority government.
As a result nobody should really have been surprised that Labour would revert to support Fianna Fáil in 1992 in view of the way the numbers stacked up.
Nobody should be surprised by what might happen after the coming election.
It will all depend on the numbers. We could even see a Fianna Fáil/ Fine Gael coalition, with a rotating Taoiseach.