by Gary Murphy
De Valera was again not too taken with this approach:
I received your letter. I am afraid you have not given to this matter all the thought that is necessary. Had you done so, I doubt if you would have sent me your letter. I know you do not expect a long argumentative reply from me, so I will merely say – just think it over.16
One of de Valera’s more interesting correspondents was the pharmaceutical entrepreneur, Sam McCauley, who suggested to him:
Like the rest of us you must have mellowed with the years, and I am sure your genuine feelings towards your main political opponents are no different than towards the ‘Hibernians’ of 1918. The Civil War occurred thirty-two years ago, and the younger generation are not interested as to who was responsible. The majority of the older generation (in my opinion) who participated in the Struggle 1916–21 would like to see a re-unification of the people who made the conditions of today possible … I can claim neutrality, and if the leaders of ‘Fianna Fáil’ and ‘Fine Gael’, would consider an informal conference for an exchange of views, with a view to unification, I would be delighted to arrange venue and preside at an inaugural meeting. I am writing Dick Mulcahy, and outside that no one is aware of the matter. Should the proposed meeting fail, no one need know anything about it.17
De Valera simply acknowledged receipt of this request, but McCauley was not deterred, and followed up his original note by declaring:
In taking the liberty of writing you and Dick Mulcahy last week, I felt sure the present political set afforded an ideal opportunity for healing the wound of the Civil War. In the interval I have discussed the present set-up with many Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael friends without giving a hint or clue of the initiative I had taken, and I am more satisfied than ever that there is an overwhelming majority in favour of unity. There seemed to be a general feeling, however, that you were the stumbling block, and as I have so often done before, I recalled on such occasions the incidents that arose during your visit to Downpatrick in 1918. Amongst many of your friends you are affectionately referred to as the ‘big fellow’, and that isn’t just a matter of height. Zero hour is approaching, and unless some move is made today, it will be too late. I suggest you are ‘Big’ enough to make that move, and to be generous to the other side. If unification eventuates it will undoubtedly involve dropping certain personalities, but to my mind, unity is of greater importance than any individual.18
This heartfelt appeal to the ‘big fellow’ failed to elicit a response, and rather than enter any type of national Government or engage in coalition bargaining, Fianna Fáil duly opted for opposition.
In opposition, Lemass considered it essential to stem the loss of support for Fianna Fáil in urban Ireland if he was to gain a stranglehold on economic and industrial policy once Fianna Fáil returned to office. Bew and Patterson have commented on how Fianna Fáil’s failure in urban areas presented Lemass with a golden opportunity to identify the party with economic expansion.19This, however, is more a case of reading history backwards. In 1954 there was no certainty of Fianna Fáil having a quick return to office, and emphatically no certainty that Lemass would succeed de Valera as party leader. A profile of Lemass in The Irish Times in July 1953 remarked: ‘when the time comes it is assumed he will succeed his chief. But will it be as easy as that?’20Furthermore, The Leader, in a commentary on the 1952 budget, noted:
The Taoiseach himself is temperamentally disposed towards ‘austerity’ and he has himself thrived in applying it in his own case. The ‘modest frugal’ life has generally been the ideal advocated by him for Ireland, while he has rarely shown the same exuberant enthusiasm for an industrialised and prosperous Ireland which the Tanaiste has always endeavoured to promote.21
The priority for Lemass was to develop an economic programme that he could put into operation once he and his party were back in office, and – more importantly – that his programme would deliver results. In 1954 it was not clear whether either objective could be met.
An ‘impossible’ proposal
The second Inter-Party Government was unable to make any dent in the country’s economic woes, and in the general election of March 1957 Fianna Fáil won an overall majority. The ageing and increasingly blind de Valera was once again Taoiseach. Within three months, the US embassy was reporting that de Valera was contemplating retirement, and had decided that James Ryan, the newly appointed Minister for Finance, should succeed him. The reasons for de Valera’s choice, according to the reporting officer, John La Fréniere, makes for what can only be called interesting reading. The election had been called when the Inter-Party Government of 1954–57 folded after Clann na Poblachta withdrew its support over the Government’s failure to formulate and implement any long-term economic development plan to ensure full employment, together with its failure to make any effort towards the reunification of Ireland. Fine Gael had attempted to avert an election when it approached Fianna Fáil on 5 February with a view to forming an alliance. Rumours of Fine Gael’s overtures caused de Valera to issue a statement on 10 February wherein he admitted to receiving two members of Fine Gael and ‘listening’ to a proposal that he found ‘impossible’. According to de Valera, when he mentioned it to the Fianna Fáil committee ‘as a matter of course’, the committee dismissed the proposal, and he informed the Fine Gael representatives accordingly. Nevertheless, La Fréniere reported to the State Department on 18 February that a merger was still a possibility:
The reporting officer has learned reliably that a rapprochement between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael might occur should Fianna Fáil not obtain a working majority out of the election. It is reported that Seán MacEntee and Seán Lemass, lieutenants of de Valera, very much favour combining with Fine Gael to form a Government, if this becomes necessary. It was learned that the two parties would be prepared to come to an agreement on basic economic principles and on national commitments; however it seems unlikely that de Valera and General Richard Mulcahy, the Fine Gael leader, would serve in the same cabinet because of long and deep seated animosities.22
There is some limited evidence that Fine Gael made approaches to Fianna Fáil, and it certainly had considered the mechanics of a national Government. Alex Bolster, a Fine Gael member, had submitted a policy document to Mulcahy in which he outlined various proposals as to how a national Government would be constituted. Mulcahy went public on 18 February, calling for a spirit of co-operation in Government between Ireland’s political parties.23This was not a call for unification between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, or a merging of the two, but would mean ‘working together as separate entities but bringing their own special contribution of thought and work to public affairs’. Bolster was particularly keen on the idea of a vocational council that would work in co-ordination with Dáil Éireann:
As Dáil Éireann would provide the ultimate expression of political thought and practice the Vocational Council would provide the ultimate in experience and practice of all the other activities which go to make up the entire national structure. Apart altogether from the experience of the past, it is both natural and essential that the country should reap the benefit of the advice and guidance of those best fitted to provide such in all matters concerning the everyday life of the people. Certainly it can be said that with complete truth that the lack of co-ordination and amicable co-operation between political party Government and vocational bodies up to the present has contributed in great measure to the condition of our country today.24
Bolster’s memorandum, however, also called for nothing short of a renunciation of the constitution, advocating as it did the abolition of the proportional-representation system of elections, a significant decrease in the numbers of TDs, suspension of the office of president of Ireland, the substitution of the Seanad with a vocational council, and the abolition of the compulsory teaching of Irish. Notwithstanding these rather surreal proposals – given that the constitution was only twenty years in existence – there is a piece of evidence in the MacEntee papers alluding to the idea
of a national Government; in a diary entry of 4 February 1957 he notes:
Jas Crosbie asked to see me urgently. I saw him for about 20 minutes, arriving about 5.50 and leaving about 6.10. He told me that what he had to say was off the record and strictly confidential. He then expressed the uneasiness of himself and some others regarding the continuance of the existing situation in which a majority of persons on both sides of the House who had the same fundamental views on most matters were kept divided. They wondered whether they could not be brought together either before or after the election. He recognised the difficulties inherent in his proposal, but was anxious to avoid any repetition of weak Governments. He proposed to continue to sound opinion.25
We do not have MacEntee’s response, but there is no evidence that he – however putatively – in any way supported the idea of a national Government involving Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael before the 1957 election. Moreover, Lemass – in an interview with John F. McCarthy in 1969 – maintained that though the possibility of a national Government had been raised by Fine Gael, and that he had indeed met a member of Fine Gael (who he refused to name) in the Shelbourne Hotel, he had informed this individual that the idea was ‘completely impractical’.26
For its part, Fine Gael had mooted on a number of occasions the idea of unifying the opposition to Fianna Fáil within a single political party. Such moves – involving at various times Clann na Poblachta and Clann na Talmhan – were driven by significant Fine Gael figures such as T.F. O’Higgins, James Dillon and its first Taoiseach, John A. Costello, who on a visit to Canada in September 1948 told the Canadian prime minister, Mackenzie King, that he thought he ‘had the goodwill of all five parties in his Government. He believed by a certain amount of talk he would be able to get them welded into one party.’27
The view from the fourth estate
Calls for a national Government found their loudest public expression in the main newspapers. In the run-up to the 1951 election, the Irish Independent advocated an all-party Government that would include Fianna Fáil: ‘The best brains for governing the country and guiding it through the difficult years ahead are not to be found in any one party.’28Two days later, it advocated ‘a Government representing all parties because in our opinion Fianna Fáil should have agreed to participate with the other parties in 1948 and should agree to do so now’.29In the immediate aftermath of the election – in which Fianna Fáil failed to secure an overall majority – it interpreted the result as a ‘mandate for an all-party Government’.30
On the eve of the 1954 election, the Irish Independent expressed the view that ‘one-party rule has not solved the nation’s problems; it has kept alive old feuds and personal spleens’.31It is noteworthy, however, that its calls for Fianna Fáil participation in all-party Government tended to be loudest when outgoing Inter-Party Governments appeared to be on the ropes.32This could be seen as a tactic designed to ensure the continuance in Government of Fine Gael, or even as an outgrowth of a certain type of corporatism involving not only interest groups but political parties as well; it is certainly not the voice of the Civil War victors. Indeed, in his verdict on the 1957 election – in which Fianna Fáil defeated the Fine Gael-led Inter-Party administration – the Irish Independent’s editor, Frank Geary, noted severely that in some respects the verdict on Costello was a fitting one:
In our view it was a negative but very effective way of showing their dissatisfaction with the conduct of national affairs in the last three years. On numerous occasions this newspaper has warned the ministers that their administration was extravagant, that public expenditure was excessive, and that the people were being asked to maintain a welfare state that we cannot afford. The ministers did not heed our warnings and they have paid the price.33
Although Geary retired in September 1961,34the editorial line in the general election the following month was almost a replica of the one he had adopted in earlier years: if anything, it was even more middle of the road. All party leaders were invited to contribute articles to the paper, and did so: a similar facility, for instance, would not be accorded by the Irish Press.35On the day before the poll, the Independent expressed the hope that the result, ‘whatever it may be, will be such as to dispose of any suggestion that it is inconclusive or incomplete’.36As the result of the election became clear – Fianna Fáil were four seats short of an overall majority – it argued strongly that the politicians should accept the intelligence and wisdom they professed to discern in the electorate, and ‘get together in the united fashion that the public has so manifestly demanded’.37
The Irish Times – which had oscillated between support for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael since the ending of the Second World War – plumped in 1957 for supporting both, and called for ‘long-term Government’; in other words, ‘a merger of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’. When Fianna Fáil was returned to Government, The Irish Times declared that it would have:
… greatly preferred an inconclusive verdict which would have forced the two major parties – even at the cost of a second general election – first to merge, and then to regroup into the elements of a clearly defined Right and Left, with the philosophically differing approaches towards national problems that are the essence of parliamentary democracy in most countries.38
‘When is a stew not a stew?’
The idea of a national Government was not on de Valera’s agenda. During the election campaign of 1957, he spoke of the evils of coalition, and – even worse – how the idea of a national Government had seeped into the public consciousness. For de Valera, these were two signs of the same busted coin, with people telling Fianna Fáil that an all-party Government – a ‘national Government’ – would not be a coalition:
We have, however, new people who tell us that this All-Party Govern-ment, they say, and a Coalition ‘are poles apart’. We have now the answer to the question, ‘when is a stew not a stew’? According to the reasoning of those who claim that an All Party Government is not a Coalition the answer must be, a stew is not a stew when further ingredients are added. The purpose of this whole scheme is, of course, simply that they want Fianna Fáil to be in the swim with the rest. Fianna Fáil is, however, not in the market. Surely, it must be obvious to every thinking person that the addition of Fianna Fáil to the Coalition combination would be to add a further divergent element, making for still more Governmental hesitation and delay – still more indecision and inaction. Is the position not bad enough as it is? People who are asking for this so-called ‘National Government’ should remember that an Opposition would arise in any case. It would be created overnight, and certainly at the first controversial measure this ‘National Government’ would introduce. As Mr Lemass has said, this talk of National Government is unrealistic. It is just foolish.
He became all philosophical on representative democracy, and the importance of the party system:
Politics is no new science or art. Its story did not begin yesterday. Representative democracy and the party systems associated with it are not new. Their workings and behaviour in history can be observed by any interested student, and the evils attendant on coalitions, whether they be made up of only some parties or all parties in the state are evident and well known. They could be anticipated by any thinking man who would face up to the realities of politics. The people are being told that a number of Fianna Fáil supporters are in favour of this All Party combination. I have yet to meet them. To those not of our Party who are playing with this idea of a National Government I commend to them the words of Edmund Burke: ‘What no men could set with effect who did not set in concert; That no men could set in concert who did not set with confidence; and That no men could act with confidence, who were not bound together by common opinions, common affections, and common interests’. If you want to have a National Government you must give to the National Party the over-all majority that is required.39
Many were not convinced by de Valera’s protestations. In March 1957 the British embassy picked up on the views of the fo
urth estate. For the British, the issue revolved around the succession of de Valera, with the British ambassador, Alexander Clutterbuck, noting: ‘there are rumours that some of the old guard such as Mr Aiken would not be prepared to serve under Mr Lemass, who is the heir apparent’.40Later, the embassy would see these personality problems as opening the way for James Ryan to succeed de Valera as a compromise choice. By August, however, John La Fréniere of the US embassy was relating to the State Department how an informed source was now reporting that both Lemass and MacEntee had fallen out of favour with de Valera, causing him to lean toward Ryan as his likely successor:
This change of attitude by de Valera toward his two able lieutenants is said to have come about in early February 1957 when the then Inter-Party Government was trying to avert the general election that was threatening, and members of Fine Gael approached members of Fianna Fáil with a view to forming an alliance with Fianna Fáil or even a national Government … According to the source mentioned above, President Seán T. O’Kelly was secretly conducting the ‘merger’ negotiations between the Fine Gael leaders and Lemass and MacEntee … It is reported that the above-mentioned negotiations had proceeded to an almost final stage when Lemass and MacEntee decided it was time to include de Valera in their plans. Mr de Valera’s reaction was one of extreme annoyance and displeasure with his two colleagues and he bluntly rejected the proposals. The chief had spoken and that was that. The source states that since then Mr de Valera has indicated that he considers Dr Ryan as the person in the party who should succeed him.41
Some months earlier – when de Valera was forming his Cabinet – he had Ryan appointed to Finance at Lemass’ insistence, with MacEntee moving to Health.42Brian Farrell maintains that ‘in 1951 de Valera had refused his [Lemass] request not to reappoint MacEntee to Finance; in 1957 he acceded’.43Joe Lee’s contention that MacEntee ‘was discredited by his association with the unsuccessful policies of the previous Fianna Fáil administration’ is a valid one but must be seen in the context that de Valera himself cannot escape the charge that he had wholeheartedly supported MacEntee’s policies.44If anything, de Valera must stand equally as indicted. There is no evidence that de Valera was willing to listen to alternative advice. MacEntee’s conservative economic views would not have seen the light of day if de Valera had opposed them. As noted earlier, Fianna Fáil parliamentary party minutes of this period referred to de Valera as the ‘Chief’,45and there can be no doubt about his status. As absolute head of the party and the Government, no major policy decision could be implemented without his approval. Tom Feeney points out that MacEntee’s move from Finance was deemed necessary given the political fallout of his previous stewardship there between 1951 and 1954, and maintains that his demotion – for that is what it was – should not be read as determination on behalf of the Government to change financial policy.46Feeney credits the change in economic management as coming from the civil service, and while there is some truth in this, it is nevertheless also true to say that without a change in the economic fortunes of the country, the next general election would almost certainly have seen Fianna Fáil return to opposition. This was something de Valera could not countenance. Thus, electoral considerations demanded that change was necessary. MacEntee was demoted, and Lemass moved centre stage as leader in waiting.