I am no fan of the Fianna Fail party and had been reluctant to read this book when it first came out for fear that I would find it too upsetting. This may seem a strange thing to say but I find it very frustrating to be so out of step ideologically with so many people who over three elections voted for FF and hence tend to react emotionally. Nevertheless, I do enjoy reading history and genuinely believe that it is important to learn from it. So believing there to be now sufficient distance between myself and the events, I started reading.
I am of the belief and have have been for some considerable time, that Fianna Fail represents all that needs to change in Irish society if it is to progress. It is tribalism thinly disguised and Brian Cowens expressed love for his party is at best described as childish, at worst infantile. From Ken Wilber I have learned that an individual or group can be highly developed in some areas but utterly undeveloped in others. So it is with Fianna Fail. As Leahy says FF were excellent at getting into power but had no clue what to do with it once they had it.
This fatal flaw within the FF mindset is best illustrated by their own TDs reaction to the
abolition of the ‘dual mandate’, where many TDs also sat on local authorities, meant that many deputies had resigned but crucially kept to them selves the right to nominate a replacement. In many cases, these tended to be either ultra-loyalists who would never challenge the TD – family members, often – or else, if such could not be found, someone who would make a poor candidate. Headquarters did not hold many of them in high esteem, to put it mildly. Voters evidently shared this assessment.
The party’s customary approach to an election of promising local patronage and spending fell flat on this occasion.
Yet one incident referred to in the book got me thinking in more general terms. In May 2000 the government attempted to appoint a former Supreme Court judge to the European Investment Bank. The same judge who has been involved in the Sheedy affair and who had subsequently resigned from the Supreme Court.
Ahern and some of his ministers couldn’t understand why the public was so exercised by it. The adviser’s nearly screamed at them: because he has already been convicted by the government.
FF history is replete with examples of a capacity to turn a blind eye to past misdeeds. They have to. The party was founded by the very people who chose to take up arms rather than accept the democratic will of the people. Cooper-Flynn, Haughey, Lawlor, Burke and no doubt Ahern all benefited from the party faithfuls capacity to forgive and forget in the pursuit of power.
Yet this same capacity enabled Ahern to spend years in tortured negotiation with people whose misdeeds where far worse than an inability to manage ones accounts with probity. The past actions of Republicans, Unionists and successive British governments are soaked in blood but there is one clear lesson from history and it’s that the creation of peace in divided societies invariably necessitates the overlooking of past deeds. In fact it requires the suspension of any judgements regarding the others past or present behaviour in pursuit of some future goal.
This is not to be confused with an ability to see the big picture for it is in reality an inability to do so. It involves a focus on a single goal, be it peace in Northern Ireland or the winning of an election, to the exclusion of all else. My own suspicion is that, in Aherns’ mind, these two were inextricably linked. If he were to bring about peace, he would be the one to bring about the inevitable United Ireland and a grateful people who would maintain his party in power for ever. It would be the realisation of the aim for which the party was founded.
There is a price to pay for all things of lasting value and we are paying that price now. It could be argued that a successful and progressive Republic would spill over into Northern Ireland making it increasingly difficult for Irish Unionism to be heard above the hum of Electronic Funds Transfers across what would become (and has become) an invisible border. People follow jobs and so does their politics.
So we know how they did it and we know why they did it. Neither of which has any place in the kind of society that I would prefer to live in. Yet my son informs me that his generation will still vote FF if they think they could create another boom. For being the children of a boom, they know naught else. And that’s the way Fianna Fail want it to stay for stupid is as stupid does.
