For this research, I knocked on hundreds of doors all over the city centre, attended hustings, rallies and radio programmes, drove cars, bought lunches, debated, argued, wore badges and covered myself in party stickers, drew lines on maps, offered advice, and actually became a supporter of my candidate. In the tradition of anthropological science, I went native.
* * *
Irish political campaigns are not about espousing grandiose ideological theories or testing your assumptions in the arena of informed debate. They are about shouting at other candidates on the telly and knocking on every door in the constituency. My constituency is Dublin Central,20 which elects four representatives to the Dáil. It has about 65,000 voters living behind 34,000 doors, all of which, ideally, should be knocked on at least once in a month of campaigning. My candidate represents a conservative, some would say right-wing, party, in a predominantly left-of-centre working-class area. The constituency is a mix of ordinary Dubs, elderly Dubs, students who are left-wing until they make enough money to migrate south of the Liffey, migrants from the Southside who couldn’t afford Southside housing during the Celtic Tiger boom, and emigrants from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe.21 There are also a few posh enclaves in the east of the constituency.
I turned up on the first night for training and orientation as a campaigner. I was told that topics that worried voters included employment, the Budget, public sector reform, health and general political reform. For homework I was to study the party position on these topics before meeting the public. The party had usefully set these out in an idiot’s guide called the Five Point Plan.22 Over the coming weeks many voters would ask me to remind them ‘How many points are there in the Five Point Plan?’ If I was having a good day, I would say ‘Six!’ I also learned that people who don’t agree with the party’s point of view, generically called Fianna Fáilers, argue with you and people who do agree don’t and are usually polite. Supporters of another party will detain you in argument at their door so that you will effectively meet fewer potential voters during the campaign. If you are not getting abused, you are getting interrogated. My job was simple: as one of a pack of campaigners, I would knock on constituency doors asking for votes for my candidate. If they seemed interested or sympathetic, I would ask Pablo, waiting on the footpath out of harm’s way, to say hello and shake their hand. I would move on if they were hostile or Fianna Fáilers. If Pablo – who, being political, likes to talk – stayed too long at any door, I would drag him away to the next one. If houses had no front gardens and the doors opened onto the street, it was easy for our pack to relay down an entire terrace with impressive efficiency. If houses had front gardens, someone, i.e. me, had to open and close all the gates so progress was slower. With five or six people in a pack accompanying Pablo, we could relay past each other in a highly organised system.
How to Be a Candidate
On my first night of actual campaigning we went to Stoneybatter, where there were no front gardens. I excitedly knocked at my very first door. As the door opened, I opened my mouth to speak the lines I had practised in the mirror that morning but the Stoneybatter woman got in ahead of me with, ‘I’m not taking anything off fucking Fianna Fáil,’ and immediately slammed the door in my face. I resolved to be faster with my lines. At the next door I blurted out as fast as I could that I was looking for a number one vote for Pablo Cruise. Then I saw that this Stoneybatter man was holding a joint. He was incapable of any sudden movements or decisions. Relaxing, I went on to tell him that I was sorry to disturb his evening but I was campaigning for the upcoming election and… ‘I’m not interested,’ he told me calmly. ‘I’m not interested in anything, man.’ And he closed the door.
A few doors later, I got to say my lines again. This time I was told ‘You are all a crowd of shaggers.’ For the sake of my research, I asked if that was a good thing or a bad thing. The door was slammed so I moved on without clarity. So far I hadn’t been able to safely introduce Pablo to anyone.
I got to another door where I had a very animated reception from an elderly couple. From the old man I learned that the collective noun for politicians is a ‘shower’. I also learned that when politicians form showers, the most effective way to interact with them is to shoot them. I was told ‘You need shooting. My only problem is that I can’t decide whether to use a shotgun or a pistol.’
‘Now love, don’t upset yourself. They’re not worth it,’ his wife said, patting his arm.
He pushed her inside. ‘I’ll have my say. I wrote to you shower about the dogs shitting and pissing against that pole,’ he said, pointing to a telephone pole on the footpath just outside his house. ‘When I got up the other morning there was the shit and piss back again. Yous are all useless. You’re all the fucking same.’ When Pablo heard the shouting, he came to my rescue. He assured the old man that the situation would be looked into. His wife, who had been nervously standing inside the door, came out and gently led her muttering husband back inside.
At the next door a woman told me that she didn’t know what way she was going to vote, but that she was not going to tell me. Fair enough! At another door I found out that because it was a Sinn Féin house it was nothing personal but they had no interest in my policies. At another door I got my first sympathetic reception so I knocked at the next door feeling good. From inside, a voter shouted through the letterbox, ‘You have a fucking cheek even knocking on that door whoever the fuck you are. Fuck off the whole fucking lot of you.’ I did.
On I went into the dark night. A blue door opened.
‘Good evening, Mrs. How are you?’
‘I’m fine, pet, if I don’t think about it.’ The blue door closed.
A brown door opened.
‘Fucking shower of bastards.’
‘I’m not with Fianna Fáil,’ I shouted.
‘Oh. Okay so. Sorry.’ The brown door closed.
A yellow door opened.
‘I’m voting for E.’
‘But he isn’t a candidate in this constituency,’ I calmly pointed out.
‘I like him. I’m voting for him anyway so fuck off.’ The yellow door closed.
A grey door opened.
‘Can you get me a CCTV camera on that fence over there?’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Can I tell you about our Five Point Plan?’
‘I want it pointing down that alley over there because it fills with gurriers every weekend.’ The grey door closed.
I knocked on a door with four statues of the Blessed Virgin lined up in the fanlight.
‘What’s your position on abortion?’
I was taken off guard because my briefing notes didn’t cover that. ‘Oh no. Not this again. Is it okay if I don’t have one?’ I respond meekly.
‘Abortion is very important to me. I am a seventy-year-old woman who cares about abortion. The EU is gone mad on abortion. How can I vote for you if you won’t tell me what your position on abortion is? Come back. Stop running away.’
Another blue door opened.
‘Where’s Pablo’s mother? I want to talk with her.’
‘She’s not here tonight.’
‘She’s a lovely woman. Tell her to call round to see me.’
‘I will.’
‘Good night.’
‘Good night,’ I said, surprised because I realised that was the first time someone said it to me all evening. The blue door closed.
The next night that I was out canvassing, we had a volunteer from Kansas with us called Daniel. Daniel had contacted the campaign manager through his Facebook account to volunteer for our leaflet drop. After a speedy orientation on the Five Point Plan, he came with me to Cabra.
I was standing a few feet away when Daniel knocked at his very first door, which instantly swung open to reveal a wizened old woman with her fist held above her head ready to strike like a cobra.
‘Feck off ye Fianna Fáil bollix!’ she shouted at him before he could move his lips. Daniel was conscientious so he wasn’t going to be deflect
ed from his mission easily. He thrust out his hand to shake hers and immediately started into his prepared drawl. ‘Good evening, ma’am. My name is Daniel. I’m from Kansas. I’m looking for your vote in the election.’ She slowly lowered her fist, silently taking a flyer from him while staring with her mouth open in confusion. When we met on the street at the garden gates, Daniel primly remarked that you would never find a sweet little old lady like her calling you a bollix in Kansas.
From door to door the serious issues such as public sector pay, minimum wage, mortgage relief and childcare support came up. But then there were the more pressing issues. One of my fellow campaigners asked a voter when she opened her door:
‘Listen missus, we have been out here for hours. Do you mind if I use your loo?’
‘I do mind because I don’t support you shower.’
‘I only want to use your toilet. I’m not asking you to vote for us.’
‘What if anyone sees you? They’ll think I’ve gone over to the other side.’
‘No one will see me.’
Eventually all eight of us used her toilet.
A black door opened.
‘Mister, have you any kids? You can’t have because if you had you’d know that you couldn’t afford them. I have three but I can’t afford even one and you can’t send them back. Will your party take two of my kids off of me? Here, take them. Yous can have these two. They’re in playschool now. They’re more expensive than this one here who is still only a babby. None of you shower will take any of them off me but you won’t give me enough money to hold on to them. Here, come back; I have a suitcase packed for the two of them. Come back. I’ll only be a minute. Fecking shower! Yous are all useless.’
The black door closed as I ran down the path without the children.
Another night, just before midnight, Pablo picked me up on a street corner to drive me to a national radio station where he was participating in a late night debate. In order to get into the studio, I had to pretend to be his bodyguard. I imagined that those in security who saw me were hoping he wouldn’t experience any real threat. He said, ‘I hope you’re taking note of the rock ’n roll lifestyle of the Irish politician.’ I told him I would take note. I sat in the empty dark hall to wait for him while he was in the studio. A few hours later, on the way home in his car, he asked me if I was going to vote for him. I told him that I hadn’t yet made up my mind what way I was going to vote. I promised him I would give it serious consideration.
Back on the campaign trail, I learned that the social class of your audience can be determined by the political topics that engage the people you meet at doors. In middle-class homes there are philosophical concerns. For example, a very polite woman told me that she was a humanist. As such, she could recognise my human attributes, which allowed her to treat me with the respect that all humans deserved. On that principle she asked me to please leave her door immediately. I politely complied. Another middle-class voter enquired about the party’s policy on atheism. I pointed out that atheism didn’t yet animate the imaginations of the average voter. Several middle-class voters said they would support us because their kids were in school with the children of my candidate. Another middle-class concern was the threat to the mandatory status of the Irish language in secondary schools. I tried hard to resist telling them about the effect Peig Sayers has had on me. I didn’t mention Peig in the national interest. I had learned at orientation that the golden rule of canvassing is that you should not argue with the voter. I quickly moved on to the next door, promising myself I would go to see my analyst soon.
A sign on a door read:
No leaflets. No menus. No ads. No flyers. No business cards. No political pamphlets. No campaigners.
We do not donate to charities that call to the door. We do not buy things at the door.
We do not vote for anyone at the door.
(And no – we do not need or want TV or telephones. We are entirely self-sufficient).
I knocked on a battered brown door. The little old man beckoned me into his hall with his index finger while nervously looking up and down the street. ‘Is there anyone out there with you?’ he asked, peeking over my shoulder.
‘No. It’s just me,’ I lied.
‘When C was here yesterday, I swear I saw our ex-Taoiseach hiding in that bush over there. Do you think I’m cracking up or what? Is it possible I saw him?’
‘Anything is possible,’ I said.
‘I’m probably all right but at my age it’s hard to tell.’
At a red door the man who opened it stared quizzically at me before shrugging and saying ‘I no speak English, you know?’
I tell him that I am sorry for disturbing his telly watching. As I turn away, a voice from inside shouts, ‘Who’s that luv?’
He replies, ‘Just some fucking canvasser’ before closing the door.
At a green door I was told, ‘Your candidate promised me a pedestrian crossing at the bottom of the road for the children coming from school. My son was in primary school then. Now he’s in secondary but I think he will be at university by the time we get it.’ The green door closed.
At another green door an old woman points at a framed portrait of Michael Collins on the wall in the hallway of her home. The picture has a small light burning beneath it which it shares with the Sacred Heart picture beside it, and both are surrounded by fresh flowers. She smiles and gives me a thumbs-up sign before gently closing the door.
Later, at a white door, I am asked if my candidate can work miracles.
‘Yes he can,’ I said confidently. ‘He can actually work miracles.’
‘I’ll probably vote for him so.’ The white door closed.
I met the rest of my canvassing pack at an intersection of two residential roads. They were taking a fag break while discussing the performance of our candidate earlier on national television.
‘I thought Pablo got a dig in. Do you think he got a dig in? I think he really got a dig in!’
Meanwhile, a van pulled up. Four men dressed in black got out with a short ladder. They started to take down a poster from a nearby telephone pole.
‘Is that one of our posters?’ a pack member asked about the placard being stashed in the back of the van.
‘No, it’s one of them.’
‘That’s okay so! As I was saying, he got a real dig in at your man.’ Fags finished, we started down another road with our pack leader shouting after us: ‘Remember lads. Ninety seconds max per door and don’t argue with the punters.’
The Rules of Guessing
When canvassing in the mornings, you are most likely to meet people who work the night shift trying to sleep. If they do get up out of bed to open the door, you will wish they hadn’t. You meet the unemployed, if they haven’t left the house to lie on the canal bank and feed the ducks. You also meet the retired, who like to discuss their frailties with anyone who calls to their door.
‘Do you have any questions?’ Pablo asked an elderly man on the East Wall.
‘Do you have a cure for arthritis?’ the old man asked in earnest.
I discovered that I don’t have a face for politics: apparently my expressions seem to betray my inner emotions. I found this out many times but especially during the voter guessing game. A custom of canvassing the older voter is that, before you elicit any specific details, you are invited to guess what that information is. On a cold and rainy morning, I was standing half way down a path, dripping wet and waiting for a pause in the conversation that would allow me to drag Pablo away from an elderly woman who had developed guessing to a refined art. She had been discoursing on her illnesses and diagnoses for ten minutes.
‘What age do you think I am? Guess. What age?’ she asked, pointing to her chest.
‘Seventy-nine,’ Pablo said, while I said ‘Fifty’ on the principle that you should always flatter a woman about her age.
‘Fifty? Fifty! Will you go away with your fifty? I’m sixty-eight.’
I felt more diplomatic
than Pablo; I thought I felt more political. Pablo could learn something from me. Having allowed myself to be drawn into the guessing game, she was next asking us to guess how many illnesses she had in the last year. ‘Five,’ I guessed, while Pablo offered nine. ‘Twelve,’ she said with pride, happy to have out-foxed us. Warming up, she asked us to guess how many times she had been in hospital. ‘Twelve,’ I said, immediately getting into the logic of the competition, while Pablo guessed nine again. Afterwards I asked him if nine was his lucky number.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I always guess nine. Why not?’
Back at the contest she told us smugly that she had been in hospital fifteen times. I was still doing the mental arithmetic to work out the frequency of her visits when she asked us to guess how much she had spent on pills in the last year alone. Pablo tried nine thousand euro, while I suggested a million under my breath.
‘Two thousand,’ she told us. Disappointed, she pointed at me and said to Pablo, ‘Look at him. He’s standing there smiling at me. Thank God for you, Pablo. I’ll vote for you. I won’t vote for him.’ Unlike me, Pablo is able to keep the smile at bay when he has to.
The Rules of Asking Questions
If you have no interest in either a candidate or their policies and if you don’t want them to be elected, you should draw up a list of at least ten questions with which to ambush them when they knock on your door. Better still, invite the candidate you don’t want to be elected into your kitchen for tea and biscuits. Then unroll your scroll of questions. My candidate, Pablo, a member of a conservative party, was invited into the kitchen of two lesbian voters. We knew they were lesbians because they announced this fact first thing when they opened their door together: ‘Hi. We’re lesbian voters.’
How to Be Irish Page 18