Of Blueshirts and stuffed shirts
As Fine Gael buries the hatchet with its old enemy, this timely party history helps document the enormous changes the country has undergone
As Fine Gael enters a new era, its differences with its ancient enemy cast aside to enter Government with Fianna Fáil, the timing of this book could not be better. Written by Stephen Collins, a longstanding political columnist with the Irish Times newspaper, and academic Ciara Meehan, it is a thorough examination of the party’s existence from its origins in Cumann na nGaedheal to its membership of a historic coalition.
The book charts the party leaders, bookended by WT Cosgrave and Leo Varadkar, two men who symbolise the enormous social and political change the country, if not their party has undergone since the foundation of the State.
As chairman of the Provisional Government and president of the new Dáil, Cosgrave a committed Catholic, cautious and self-effacing, steered a disparate coalition of political interests in defence of the fledgeling new State for almost a decade until their defeat by Fianna Fáil in the 1932 election.
The Fine Gael party was formed the following year in 1933, largely to take on Fianna Fáil, with the controversial Blueshirt leader Eoin O’Duffy at the helm.
As the country’s first openly gay Taoiseach from an ethnic background, Leo Varadkar reflects a liberal young Ireland but for all that, under his leadership, the huge momentum Fine Gael gathered under Enda Kenny had dissipated by the last election, throwing a cloud over the future.
Relying on historical records, news reports, and increasingly as the years progress, on memoirs by such luminaries as Gemma Hussey, Ruairi Quinn and Fergus Finlay, Saving The State offers a cool-headed and factual analysis of the party’s role historically and today.
The reader looking for gossip, hearsay or the sort of indiscreet insider accounts that breathe life into staid political figures and events should seek it out elsewhere.
That said, the political backdrop from the tumult of the War of Independence and the bitter Civil War era to the 1950s, when we were practically a failed State, to the uncertainty created by Brexit, is laid out in a lucid and fairly engaging fashion.
The book ends on an upbeat note with Leo Varadkar, despite his party’s routing at the polls, looking forward to another stretch as Taoiseach, the old Civil War duopoly broken down and a bright new future beckoning for his party.
Or so he thinks. While not explicitly stated, the presence of Sinn Féin snapping at its heels, presumably obliging Fine Gael to leverage again its reputation for saving the State, is never far away.
Such a vista would have seemed impossible for much of the party’s history when its obituary was repeatedly written and either poor political judgement or being overshadowed by rival parties caused it to lose its identity as a counterweight to Fianna Fáil’s recklessness on the North and the economy.
For despite the grandiose Saving The State title, the truth is, as the authors relate, that Fine Gael has for many years languished on the opposition benches, its thunder stolen by the more nimble and charismatic leaders of the Labour party.
During the 1982 Fine Gael-Labour coalition, Dick Spring vigorously resisted any attempt to balance the books. Jim Mitchell begged that Garret FitzGerald go to the country to see if they could get an overall majority, to no avail.
Spring also eclipsed John Bruton from the opposition benches in 1992, leading the attacks on Haughey and pushing for the tribunal into the beef industry following the World In Action report into the Goodman empire.
During the financial crisis, Labour’s Eamon Gilmore was Fianna Fáil’s strongest critic, accusing Brian Cowen of ‘ economic treason’. At its annual conference in 2009 Labour ignited a ‘Gilmore for Taoiseach’ campaign causing, according to the authors, ‘a number of Fine Gael TDs to panic’.
The authors also claim that even when the party was firing on all
In opposition, Fine Gael had its thunder stolen by nimble Labour leaders
cylinders, so to speak, as during John A Costello’s inter party governments of the 1940s and 1950s, their achievements were often overlooked.
Collins and Meehan argue that through initiatives like export tax relief and industrial grants, Costello ‘created the foundations for the transformation of Ireland from a poor rural backwater on the edge of Europe to one of the wealthiest in the world in the first decades of the 21st cCentury… It is an achievement for which the party received little or no credit then or later, even from its supporters.’
Being shortchanged in the public appreciation stakes is a thread that runs right through this book, even though almost every party in the free world would surely nurse an identical grievance.
The book’s title more than hints at where the authors’ sympathies lie, so the reader can’t be surprised if objectivity flounders. What critics or opposition parties might regard as arrogance, is for the authors, merely naive. They view a lack of introspection as one of the party’s major flaws.
The first appearance of Michael Lowry on the scene, charging like a white knight to replenish the party’s empty coffers as a member of John Bruton’s inner circle is recounted with a nothing-to-seehere breeziness.
It’s only as events unfold that the authors allow that the uncashed cheque for $50,000 found in the party’s head office was a ‘dubious legacy of Michael Lowry’s time as Minister for Transport, Energy and Communications’.
A more far-reaching mistake as far as the national interest was concerned was Garret FitzGerald’s acceptance of the wording of an amendment to the Constitution proposed by Haughey’s government to copperfasten the right to life of the unborn, but that too is readily forgiven.
FitzGerald’s son Mark explains why: ‘He made the gamble on the Eighth Amendment even though his heart wasn’t in it because
Garret emerges as one of the party’s more compelling leaders
he knew that if he didn’t, then between the Church and Haughey they would wipe the floor (with Fine Gael). Well, they nearly did. It was a very close election.’
A more trenchant critic would wonder why FitzGerald, an inspirational figure for female and young voters, would allow himself be railroaded by Haughey.
But for all their bias, unconscious or otherwise, the authors largely achieve their goal of producing a readable and encyclopaedic account of the Fine Gael party, its leading lights, its changing identity and major influences from the farming community, the nationalist tradition, the Blueshirts and the ethos of the old Irish party, which brought John Bruton into the Fine Gael fold.
Saving The State is also sprinkled with lots of ‘fancy that’ asides for the lay reader: The party’s performance in 1982 under Garret FitzGerald winning 70 seats was its best result since the days of Cumann na nGaedheal in the 1920s and its share of the vote has not been surpassed since. The result of the divorce referendum in 1995 was the closest result in the history of the State. In 2011 Fine Gael became the biggest party in the Dáil for the first time since 1927. Who knew?
In fairness, the authors aren’t always admiring of the party. They show how the Catholic Church and a conservative government, often blamed for the collapse of Noel Browne’s Mother and Child scheme, were actually joined by the Irish Medical Association (IMA), the organisation representing the medical profession.
The medics saw the scheme as undermining private medicine and, together with Fine Gael, the seeds of the two-tier health service were sown.
The energetic Enda Kenny and the painstaking work undertaken by Frank Flannery, Phil Hogan and others brought about the party’s revival in 2011 when it dramatically changed its identity to that of a catch-all party like Fianna Fáil.
Their root-and-branch reform was as dazzling as the makeover conducted by Garret FitzGerald when he took over.
Garret emerges as one of the more compelling leaders, not just because of his success at stamping his identity on his party or his daring constitutional crusade, but also because his towering ambition seemed so at odds with his often shambolic and cerebral persona.
Unlike other leaders whose well-heeled families often formed the cradle of Fine Gael, FitzGerald was larger than party ties or the founding fathers.
As the authors write, ‘his wider interests meant that, in spite of his Fine Gael pedigree, he was never a true party man, and he confessed in his autobiography that he voted for Fianna Fáil in 1961 out of admiration for Seán Lemass.
‘His political instincts in later years were closer to Labour, and he only joined Fine Gael because he believed it gave him a better opportunity to achieve what he wanted in politics.’
Today we may see that vaulting ambition and slightly remote persona embodied in Leo Varadkar, without perhaps the clearly defined political goals. Also with his party holding 35 seats it remains to be seen whether Varadkar can prevent the party’s contraction into a minor force in a radically reconfigured political landscape.
But whatever the future holds he can hardly match Michael Noonan’s distinction as Fine Gael’s unluckiest leader. Alan Dukes didn’t fare too well either as leader and he is presented quite unsympathetically as a chain-smoking brainbox who always ‘liked to have the last word’.
Perhaps the shattering of the Blueshirt taboo is one of the
As O’Duffy’s extremism grew, he was persuaded to leave the party
fresher aspects of the book. Understandably, Fine Gael prefers to bury its fascist face behind the heroic figure of Michael Collins (who died years before its birth), the liberalising momentum of FitzGerald’s pluralist vision and Declan Costello’s Just Society.
Indeed Collins and Meehan smash another party piety, that of the Just Society’s appeal for all its membership.
They write: ‘In reality the Just Society legacy was, at most, an inspiring slogan – a useful shorthand for subsequent Fine Gael politicians to signify progress.’
But back to the more problematic era of the party’s first president Eoin O’Duffy who, after winning admiration as a superb organiser in the GAA and the Irish Volunteers, went on to tarnish his reputation by openly embracing fascism.
As O’Duffy’s extremism grew, he was persuaded to leave the party. He then threw himself wholeheartedly into the movement that was sweeping Europe.
The Blueshirts might have been part of the merger that founded Fine Gael but their influence on the party dissolved eventually, even if it is still being weaponised against it in taunts and sneers.
All’s fair in love, war and politics after all.