A greedy rump of green fat cats is set to finish off Fianna Fail

ROBERT Caro, in his great biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson, says power sometimes corrupts but always reveals. Power reveals Micheal Martin stoically doing his duty despite a disloyal rump fuelled by a mostly hostile media.

Power reveals that a section of the FF parliamentary party, something between a rump and a rabble, is determined to defy the vast majority of the rank and file of Fianna Fail and bring down a good leader and a good man.

But there is nothing new in that. In my lifetime, I saw a previous suicidal section of the Fianna Fail party bring down Jack Lynch, a good leader and a good man, so as to install Charles Haughey who was neither.

Being a good leader, and a good man, is a plus with most of the Irish people who are not as cynical as their media.

But perversely it is a minus with a tantrum of

TDs whom I call Hankering Hawks because they hanker after a hawkish Haugheytype leader.

Jack Lynch and Micheal Martin share a quality that is hard to define but is much prized by the Irish people — decency.

But the Hankering Hawks and their media handlers suicidally crave a chancer like Haughey and despise the decency of a Martin.

Fianna Fail was once full of men like Martin, the son of a bus conductor who has risen on hard work and merit.

Driven by a democratic idealism, it was the most potent political organisation in Europe.

The secret of its success was its working-class vote, winning seats in the estates of Dublin, Cork and Limerick, and in towns across the country.

If you want to know what Fianna Fail was like in its greatest days, before the greed of the Haughey era eroded its moral fibre, read Sean O Faolain’s The Fur Coat.

A new junior minister, Paddy Maguire, a veteran of the War of Independence, wants to give his wife

Molly the fur coat she craves — but at the end of the story, thinking back on their years of frugality and sacrifice, she breaks down to him.

“Molly. Tell me the truth. You want this coat?”

“I do. O, God, I do!”

“Then go out and buy it.” “I couldn’t, Paddy. I just couldn’t.”

He looked at her for a long time. Then he asked.

“Why?”

She looked straight at him, and shaking her head sadly, she said in a little sobbing voice: “I don’t know.”

But we know. For their generation of genuine idealists, a fur coat is a betrayal of their past.

I’m old enough to remember the end of that era of idealism — it perished at the hands of Haughey and his media cheerleaders.

I was a young producer in RTE when Haughey began his rise and could feel the tribal temperature in the newsroom rise, too.

Haughey’s media supporters knew he had plotted against Lynch, knew he had lied in the Arms

Trial, knew his wealth was dodgy, knew his Catholic social conservatism was hypocrisy.

They didn’t care as long as he waved the green flag. Just as today’s hawks hate Martin’s responsible role in opposition, so Haughey’s hawks loved his cynical role in opposition.

They loved him rejecting the Anglo-Irish Agreement, loved his green guff about the ‘Spirit of the Nation’, loved his selfpromoting spoofing in his vanity film Charles Haughey’s Ireland.

They didn’t care that Haughey, in private life a rake, ran a relentless opposition to divorce and contraception, and in support of the Eighth Amendment — which Micheal Martin made amends for by opposing it.

They didn’t care about Haughey’s economic deception. They cheered when he opposed every budgetary measure and campaigned on the slogan that “health cuts hurt the sick, the poor and the elderly”.

They didn’t care that when he got back to power in 1987, he cut health massively and within weeks was flying around on government business on Celtic Helicopters.

Just as today’s FF hawks sneer at Martin having a moral problem with Sinn Fein, so, too, Haughey’s hawks had no moral problem with his darker side as long as he waved the green flag.

Fianna Fail paid dearly for that green frenzy. By the time Haughey was history, the party’s robust majority was gone forever.

His cultish followers still didn’t care. Watching him face the press with party grandees packed behind him, the writer Hugh Leonard said if Haughey had broken wind they’d have asked for more.

But in spite of that hard history, today’s Hankering Hawks in Fianna Fail will not be happy until they find another Haughey.

Meantime, the fatcat mix of whining about promotion and sneaking regarderism is breaking down Fianna Fail’s party discipline.

Personal ambition, rather than the party idealism of the past, is driving the current collapse of the legendary discipline in Fianna Fail.

The best example of that discipline was seen in the aftermath of the Arms Trial.

In November 1970, after the acquittal of Haughey, the opposition called a vote of no confidence in the Lynch government.

But although Lynch had sacked Haughey and Blaney as ministers, both men voted confidence in him as Taoiseach so as to keep FF in power.

The political philosopher Michael Oakeshott says the moment you enter public life, you can’t simply say ‘I want’ anymore.

Collective success means pausing personal ambition.

Hence the need for party discipline, the secret of Sinn Fein’s success.

The Hankering Hawks hanker after Sinn Fein’s populist vote — but they want it without hard graft.

So their not-socunning parasitic plan is to ditch Micheal Martin (who brought FF out of the doldrums) and hitch a ride on the Sinn Fein bandwagon — while retaining control of the coalition reins!

Now, I’m no fan of Sinn Fein. But I laugh long and hard at the notion that the greedy rabble of fat cats we saw roaring about promotion could control a coalition with Sinn Fein.

Six months into such a coalition under a new Haughey, Micheal Martin on the backbenches would be sardonically saying to his successor what LBJ said to Joe Califano after a stupid deal: “Joe, look down — they just cut your pecker off and you never felt it.”

*******

A few words on Jack Charlton. The Irish ambassador to the UK, playing to a green gallery, told us Jack had given the Irish in England confidence at a time of “negative narratives”.

He should have added the negative narratives were caused by the Provisional IRA’s brutal bombings.

For the record: Terry Wogan did more than anyone to remove tensions for the Irish in England.

Jack was smart and shrewd. First, he gave us a tactical weapon that worked against technically superior teams — playing aggressively in their half. Second, he spotted something special about us that he shared with ITV in his first interview after he got the job.

“I’ve seen them playing that game with the sticks, full of passion and that’s what I’m going to give them.”

Lovely hurling, Jack.