Against the Tide

by Noël Browne

  The film is still extant and its merits can be verified. Though its portrayal of life in Ireland at the time was limited in its scope, it was without doubt fair comment. It well justified a wider circulation than it received. Because of censorship we had to be content with showing it on the derelict gable walls of the city’s dance halls, tenements, and other centres.

  Following de Valera’s call for an election, I was immediately nominated as Clann na Poblachta candidate for Dublin South-East. Partially disabled by tuberculosis as I already was, I took a serious risk in standing for election because of the hardship involved in a mid-February election in this challenging three-seat constituency, which had John Costello, the Taoiseach-to-be, and Seán MacEntee, Minister for Finance for Fianna Fáil, as rival candidates. Phyllis with her invariable courage and selflessness, accepted the risks for both of us. (In fact I did relapse and was infected with tuberculosis shortly after taking Ministerial office. This was not generally known.)

  Though we did not know this at the time the innocents in Clann na Poblachta were to be used as political mounting blocks for others, to ease the real ‘republicans’, the ex-IRA, into Leinster House. My function in Dublin South-East was to elect a long-standing member of the IRA, Donal O’Donoghue, who had been Quarter-Master General to MacBride in the 1930s. But he polled a mere five hundred votes. It was O’Donoghue’s practice to turn up impeccably dressed at the street corners where our meetings were held, with an expression of resigned acceptance on his face as though he had been beaten into it. Our platform was an unprepossessing coal lorry. O’Donoghue would stand there incongruously in his expensive-looking brown trilby hat and spotlessly clean yellow chamois gloves, gingerly holding at the ready a folded black silk umbrella. He was a diffident apologetic man, and an unlikely member of a guerilla army.

  The ‘army’ policy for us was well summed-up by a tough and ruthless party apparatchik named Michael A. Kelly. Unlike O’Donoghue, Kelly had a lurid record of violent underground military activities in the IRA. As General Secretary of Clann na Poblachta, he stood for election in Roscommon in 1948. He was obsessively ambitious. In one short phrase he summed up our role in Clann na Poblachta: ‘with McQuillan’s boots, and my brains’, Kelly confided to a friend in Galway, ‘I’ll be elected in Roscommon.’ Happily McQuillan, who had been a county footballer and an all-Ireland medal holder, was easily elected instead, and was to become probably the most valuable and talented of all the deputies elected for Clann na Poblachta, or any other party.

  I had no experience of public speaking, but fortunately I had five enthusiastic and experienced election workers. Tommy Moran introduced me to the delicate art of the door-to-door canvass: truly impressive are the manners and patience shown to all politicians equally by the Dublin electorate. George Lawlor, my Director of Elections, had been a fully active member of a Republican Army active service unit. He had become a serious-minded, well-read socialist politician and Marxist, and is still a close friend of mine. It was George who first initiated me in the fearsome ordeal of standing up in public and addressing my fellow citizens. Cait Clancy, who has since died, was an Irish-speaking teacher in her late fifties from Co Waterford. Throughout the atrocious wintry weather, Cait with her folded umbrella sat bravely on our platform. She was well-known and respected among teachers in the Gaelic revival movement, and gave me respectability in that sector of Irish nationalism. ‘Pa’ Woods was a good-humoured, kindly, somewhat cynical national school teacher, and an experienced political worker. Finally there was a most important supporter, Mick Dowling. Mick’s asset was a lorry, which he generously put at our disposal. Mercifully, he spoke very little, since he still hankered after the ‘great little equaliser’ as a solution to the Northern question. Unlike others of that ilk, Mick was apt to say so publicly.

  We were helped by a powerful non-political organisation of absolute amateurs, a group of former TB patients and their relations. They worked diligently for long hours, canvassing from door to door. In the Irish Times, after the election, R. M. Smyllie commented, ‘Even if Dr Noël Browne had been a Red Indian, they would have had him elected because of their enthusiasm and sincerity.’ Most certainly I was not elected as a republican; Donal O’Donoghue got the miniscule republican vote.

  We had an election fund of about fifteen pounds. Because of the precarious nature of my own finances, I had to borrow my hundred pounds deposit. (This was always the case throughout my career as a politician, until the late sixties.) The campaign followed a standard pattern; every night we moved from one street corner to the next until people no longer wanted to listen to us. Hundreds of speeches must have been made. As though playing a part in a play which had been written for me, I used the same speech with minor variations for the whole of the campaign. It was the practice for some of my more enthusiastic supporters, former tuberculosis patients, to follow me around to my different meetings. Somewhat embarrassingly they would stand below me in the crowd and preview what I was going to say (‘Now he comes to the . . .,’ ‘Next he will say . . .’), so well did they know my speech. As a comment on my delivery and bearing, one lady was heard to say, ‘It’s like listening to a Jesuit preaching’.

  It would not have been an election in Dublin South-East if there had not also been critical and uncomplimentary reflections on my candidature. One of my Fianna Fáil opponents, Seán MacEntee, was a first class orator, caustic and articulate, one of the Belfast Catholic refugees from the Northern struggle so commonly found in the safety and security of southern republican politics and journalism. Noted for his ruthless electioneering tactics, he fought to win every time, but when he won, all was forgotten. Unschooled and unskilled in politics, unused to criticism or abuse, I was a soft and sensitive target.

  Fianna Fáil always did things in style: he would speak from a tricolour — flag-bedecked platform blazoned with slogans, supported by distinguished supporting speakers and local dignitaries, and could rely on an efficient public address system, as opposed to our own whimsical apparatus. Having warmed up with a tirade of ‘communists’, ‘fascists’, ‘murderers’, ‘bank-robbers’, MacEntee would then ‘fill in’ the listeners about my own personal history: ‘. . . an interloper who dares contest the seat against Fianna Fáil . . . the strangest piece of flotsam ever to have been thrown up in the history of Irish public life.’ Enthused by his own rhetoric, he went on to describe me as ‘an out of work doctor, touting for patients.’ For a doctor, it could hardly have been more offensive. In fact, I was employed at Newcastle Sanatorium as Assistant Medical Superintendent, and MacEntee well knew it.

  Speaking at Rathmines Town Hall in January 1948, MacEntee claimed that the leaders of Clann na Poblachta had led the IRA. Supported by precise dates, stated names, places, types of assault, mostly murder or attempted murder of civilians or state servants, MacEntee went on to accuse Seán MacBride of being, directly or indirectly, responsible for these murders or attempted murders. Altogether MacEntee accused MacBride of twelve serious crimes of violence.

  Those of us who had not known of this alleged bloody record of violence were shocked by it. But our hopes that immediate disclaimers would be issued by MacBride were not realised. He made no attempt to defend his name by legal action in the courts.

  During the campaign I angered the ex-IRA group by a speech I made. De Valera’s speeches were repetitious, dreary monologues on the ‘injustice of the gerrymandering of Tyrone, and Fermanagh, south Down, and south Armagh’ and the need to ‘revive the Irish language.’ He offered no solution to the realities of our mean and bankrupt lives, nor to the neglect and suffering of the people. Had he forgotten his own childhood, or did he not know of such suffering? Was it that he knew well, but no longer cared? Speaking, I believed, for my generation, I protested: ‘We are sick and tired of hearing about 1916 and 1922 and of the futile wrangling about the past. There are present social and economic evils which need resolution.’ Immediately there was a call for my expulsion from the party, led by Finaun Breathna
ch. MacBride invited me to dinner at the Bailey Restaurant, with Noel Hartnett. He remonstrated with me about my speech and advised that, in future, I ‘be more careful.’ Somewhat obscurely, but I suspect concurring with MacBride, Hartnett murmured, ‘The gods of the Hebrews are jealous gods, Noël.’

  It was only after I had stood for election that I fully realised the difficulty of contesting a small three-seater constituency like Dublin South-East in which two sitting members, Costello and MacEntee, were already firmly entrenched. It was an electoral risk breath-taking in its audacity. Now an experienced politician, I would not dare risk trying to win such a seat first time out in a short campaign lasting a fortnight, nor would I advise any young invalid friend of mine to do so.

  Yet our innocence paid off. John A. Costello headed the poll with 8,473 first preferences, followed by Seán MacEntee with 7,371. I won the third seat with 4,917. The unsuccessful candidates were E. Butler (Labour) 2,399, J. H. Douglas (Fine Gael) 2,980, D. O’Donoghue (Clann na Poblachta) 559 and Michael B. Yeats (Fianna Fáil) 2,928.

  Despite seven years as a medical student, culminating in the stress of ‘finals’ examinations, nothing I had so far known had prepared me for the ordeal of the counting of the votes. I was lucky to have been befriended by a strong supporter of Mr Costello who subsequently became his aide-de-camp when Taoiseach. He was named ‘Steeler’ Byrne because he had an artificial arm, shaped as a steel hook. A brilliant ‘tally-man’, early on in the count he was able to tell me, after counting figures on the back of an envelope, that I would be elected.

  MacEntee was one of the first to come over to me after the count. Throughout the previous fortnight he had vilified me from one end of the constituency to the other, but now, hand outstretched, in his soft Belfast accent, he welcomed me to the Dáil and wished me a long life in politics. This was my first lesson in the many faces of a politician. A budding politician myself, I held out my own hand and shook his.

  Of the Clann na Poblachta deputies elected in Dublin, Seán MacBride and Con Lehane were from the ex-IRA group. Peadar Cowan, a solicitor, was also elected to a Dublin constituency; he had been a member of the Free State army. All three made excellent deputies. Paddy Kinnane, Mick Fitzpatrick and Sean Tully represented Irish republicanism, pur sang. All three were respected old-timers, elected mainly on sentimental grounds. They had little of serious political content to offer. All of the other deputies in their own ways were of a high quality, and made worthwhile contributions during their short stay in the Dáil.

  7

  In Government

  WE WERE to find that Irish republicanism in Clann na Poblachta had many forms. First there was the elite body of republicans, former members of the Republican Army, often with blood-stained active service to prove it. Then there was a lesser breed, such as ourselves, young people with no record of violence. We could have been in the ‘movement’ and had not joined. Next was the category of young men who to their undying shame, judged by the Republican Army group, had joined the national army; they were despised. Jack McQuillan was one of these. Finally there were those, like Noel Hartnett, who had impeccable old republican credentials. Yet in the opinion of the IRA, and this included Seán MacBride, Hartnett had betrayed the Republic by siding with de Valera who, by entering parliament in the early thirties, had in their opinion also betrayed the Republic. We of these lesser breeds had one thing in common: we were not to be trusted as republicans. Neither were we to be trusted with any power in the management of Clann na Poblachta.

  Steps were taken to incorporate the permanent dominant position of the Republican Army group in the party’s controlling mechanisms by carefully-drafted provisions in the party constitution. Seán MacBride recently admitted to a student historian at University College, Galway, that 85% of the party’s forty-five executive members had had a Republican Army background. This factor was to become of decisive importance during the last days of the party’s existence. Significantly, in accordance with the constitution drawn up by MacBride, clause 9 laid down that ‘the national executive shall elect a Standing Committee of ten members, and shall have the power to co-opt an additional five members.’ Power was thus guaranteed to the Republican Army and to the party leader. In Clause 12 the Standing Committee is empowered ‘to make from time to time such additional rules as they may decide,’ and this section goes on, ‘the Standing Committee may refuse to ratify a candidate.’ Such a candidate for the Dáil in a Galway constituency was rejected on the ground that he had held a commission in the national army.

  It is possible that the standing committee encouraged MacBride to drop Noel Hartnett as his political adviser. Their influence for a short period prior to the election, and throughout the election, had been mediated by the presence of Noel Hartnett. They suspected Hartnett of having harassed them while he was a member of the higher ranks of Fianna Fáil. It was said that Hartnett was closely associated with Jim Ryan, an influential Fianna Fáil minister, thought to have been connected with the Special Branch and to have used Stephen Hayes, Chief of Staff of the IRA, as a police informer. Hartnett’s effective disappearance from the Clann na Poblachta circle of power was inevitable at the end of his usefulness as Director of Elections.

  It is generally accepted that a campaign director, following a general election, has some right to recognition by the party leader. Even if this were not so, Hartnett was one of the very few within Clann na Poblachta at that time who had had any experience of representative democracy. Yet MacBride failed to nominate him as his party spokesman in the Senate, a post in his gift; instead he nominated Denis Ireland, from Belfast, who, while a thoroughly worthy person with hardly any republican credentials, was not in any way experienced in parliamentary politics. It was not easy to see how he might make worthwhile contributions to the bread and butter politics of the Oireachtas, let alone further the destinies of Clann na Poblachta. This choice demonstrated clearly MacBride’s political priorities. A former Captain in the Royal Irish Fusiliers, Ireland was ostensibly promoted to the Senate post ‘as the symbolic union of orange and green’. The true reason later became apparent.

  Hartnett was deeply hurt by MacBride’s failure to appoint him to the Senate, yet this was not as hurtful as the loss of MacBride’s trust in him. In spite of his considerable intellectual and academic talents, Hartnett needed constant reassurance because of dissatisfaction with his own self-image. He had suffered the emotional loss of his relationship with de Valera and with Fianna Fáil; he had been publicly insulted by them. MacBride was now clearly anxious to sever their newly-formed close relationship. What was especially hurtful was the publicity with which this break occurred. Hartnett was shocked that as a shrewd and experienced political figure, he should now be summarily discarded by MacBride, whom he considered to be a political beginner.

  There was a spontaneous feeling of incredulity among the Clann na Poblachta former ‘republicans’ at Seán MacBride’s decision to join in coalition with Fine Gael. They were bewildered by the unexpectedness of this decision. I was to hear one of them describe General Mulcahy as a ‘bloody murderer.’ Following the announcement of the proposed coalition, it was rumoured that there was an ‘army’-inspired plot to kidnap myself and Seán MacBride and so prevent the formation of a Fine Gael coalition. As always in the end, MacBride mesmerised them into consent. It was a measure of their confusion that we were subsequently abused and threatened by these same men for having wrecked the coalition.

  In the talks leading to the coalition my own Director of Elections, George Lawlor, gave an ultimatum to Seán MacBride that we would not tolerate the leader of Fine Gael, General Mulcahy, as Taoiseach. After an interval, MacBride assured him that should there be a coalition John Costello, whose hands were clean of any blood-letting, would replace Mulcahy as Taoiseach. Another contender, I understand, was Sir John Esmonde, rejected because of his knighthood. Unselfishly, Mulcahy decided to stand down to facilitate the formation of the coalition, which brought together Fine Gael (31 seats),
Labour (14), Clann na Poblachta (10), Clann na Talmhan (7) and National Labour (5).

  From now on, after sixteen years of unchallenged political power, Fianna Fáil would face a succession of similar multi-party coalitions. Never again were they to enjoy their former sovereign authority as the party ‘born to rule.’ To some extent de Valera could blame his unaccustomed sojourn on the opposition benches on his decision to sack Hartnett from Radio Éireann.

  It was soon obvious that Seán MacBride had fallen in love with the trappings and aura of politics, and, above all, of Cabinet office. With egocentric optimism, he believed that he could outwit all the other political leaders in that Cabinet. On one occasion he was speaking to Hartnett and myself about the diamond-hard Paddy McGilligan, easily the brightest intellectual in the coalition Cabinet. Airily MacBride claimed that ‘with a little work, McGilligan was educable.’ Of all the men in the Cabinet, McGilligan was easily the one man who under no circumstances would have gone our way.

  From the moment he assumed leadership of the ten deputies after the election, MacBride’s policies were hard to rationalise. It has been said that he appointed me to Health instead of Con Lehane, the obvious choice, since in his opinion, I was an unknown nonentity appointed to an unimportant department. Con, a well-known solicitor, a rugged, opinionated republican, and well-liked, might have questioned the doubtful compromises to be made on republican issues in a Fine Gael coalition. There is also the possibility that the promise given by Hartnett to Harry Kennedy that the party would introduce an efficient TB service had had some influence.

  Even to a seasoned experienced politician, the problems of coalition government are formidable. A succession of minority party leaders during the last forty years has failed to reconcile their membership of a coalition with their responsibilities to their own electorate. MacBride’s problem was that he did not even appreciate the size of the dilemma. The Fine Gael leadership never fully trusted him, even though he believed he had captivated and out-foxed them. It is a grim statistic that of the five parties that formed the first coalition three, Clann na Talmhan, Clann na Poblachta, and National Labour, have not been heard of since and a fourth, Connolly’s Labour Party, has declined continuously and no longer matters as a serious political entity.