by Noël Browne
As I slowly progressed through the saga of my disagreements with the members of the hierarchy and heard their readily adjustable versions of what occurred at our various interviews, I valued yet again the wisdom of my departmental secretary’s shrewd advice, that in any negotiations it would be advisable to bring a reliable witness. Brian Walsh, who had had some experience of the ecclesiastic courts, told me that when these courts were first established some worldly wise lawyer priest had had inscribed within the precincts of the court the words, ‘Nemine Crede’ (believe no-one).
Later I was told, by impeccable sources, two strange stories about the mother and child scheme as seen from the side of the church authorities. The first claimed that Archbishop McQuaid was harshly misjudged; a deeply committed churchman, utterly dedicated to his faith and its essential soul-saving mission to mankind, he was a simple and good man who had been manipulated with much skill by Dr Michael Browne, who, it was claimed, had been in fact responsible for the preparation of the ten-point document sent to the first Coalition government in condemnation of the health scheme. It is true that there were important factual errors in the memorandum which would invalidate its conclusions. Yet the case argued from these facts was a powerful plea from the church against encroachment in matters of health by the ‘State bureauracy’. The second story was more remarkable. It claimed that Dr Browne ‘was afraid of me as a dangerous, Goebbels type of man, deep and sinister’. For this reason, he did not discuss the scheme with me on my visit to him.
Demonstrably my episcopal visits were fool’s errands. My Cabinet colleagues, and especially Seán MacBride, well knew that the hierarchy had no intention whatever of supporting me or our scheme. Possibly they believed I would be worn down by boredom, demoralised, or exhausted by the tedium and futility of the struggle. They may have believed that I might even be intimidated into submission by the sight of all those croziers. Obedient to the last, my next call was to the diocese of Ferns, where I had an uneventful meeting with Dr Staunton. Politely we exchanged pleasantries, and parted.
Finally, on 31 March I set out to meet Cardinal Dalton, of Armagh. He was a pleasant, withdrawn, scholarly-looking man. Our conversation was stilted, formal, and with the exception of one brief period, banal and inconsequential. The Cardinal gave the impression that he was politely wondering what on earth he was doing sharing his luncheon table with this odd, earnest young man who was clearly preoccupied with an abstruse and awkward health problem. The sole gain for me was the pleasant hock with the fish at luncheon, which I had arrived just in time to share with the Cardinal. I suspect that he accepted the ordeal and decided to ‘offer it up’, as did I. There was but one reference by me, and none by him, to the mother and child service. It is important to note, however, that the Cardinal made no attempt to answer the one crucial and pertinent question that I did put to him, about the use of Aneurin Bevan’s National Health Service by Catholics in Northern Ireland. His disdainful reply smacked of royalty standing on its dignity: ‘We are prepared neither to apologise, nor to explain’.
My visits to the bishops were a wanton squandering of valuable time, both mine and theirs. I was merely a mendicant government minister uselessly pleading for the underprivileged of the Republic with the princes of their church. The truth was that neither they nor I had anything of value to say to one another. A final decision dictated by Rome had already been taken in Maynooth, and readily accepted by all members of the Cabinet, that they should rid themselves of this tiresome colleague who continued to believe in the principle of representative parliamentary democracy.
The procedure adopted by my opponents in Cabinet was for each of them either to ask me to their office to plead their point of view about the health scheme, or to come to my room in Leinster House and discuss it there. Using every conceivable argument, they pleaded with me to change my mind about the scheme and to accept the bishops’ ruling as they had done. The Taoiseach, the Tanaiste and Mr. Dillon were the main apologists for the Cabinet. All their arguments could be summarised by the refrain of Seán MacBride, later to be publicly recorded by him and by the members of the Cabinet: ‘You cannot afford to fight the church’. My reply to all this was clear, simple, and consistent.
Repeatedly I pointed out to them that I had not made the law and that I alone could not make a new one. In 1947 the Oireachtas had passed into law the free no-means-test Section 23, under which the scheme was to be implemented, following a full public debate in both Houses. The decision was later ratified in Cabinet in June 1949. I invited each of them formally to move in Cabinet that it be dropped. Should they do this I would then be glad to re-consider my position as Minister for Health in the coalition Cabinet. None of them would take up that clear challenge. The Cabinet response to my proposal showed that they were still afraid to change the no-means-test principle. The whole matter with them remained a political issue and not one of conscience.
The intention in Cabinet was, no doubt, that I would ‘bell the cat’ for them, and plead with the electorate on their behalf that medical or episcopal opposition made it impossible for me to implement the free principle. The rest of the Cabinet and indeed the hierarchy could then avoid the opprobrium of such a shoddy political compromise. Politically they would exculpate themselves in advance of any charge by Northern Unionists that Rome in fact ruled in the Republic. I had no intention of facilitating this escape from their dilemma.
So began what a civil servant friend of mine, Michael Mulvihill, called ‘the retreat from Maynooth’. We continued to work in the Department on the assumption that the scheme would go ahead. I had expected that the Labour Party would be compelled to support such a socially desirable and badly-needed health scheme, but Norton was one of the first to defect. Because of Clann na Poblachta’s repeatedly declared enthusiasm for the scheme, and their ‘revolutionary’ background, I did not expect that under MacBride’s leadership they also would desert such a fine cause under pressure.
In dropping the scheme, the Cabinet was to have the full support of the medical profession and the media, with the honourable exception of the Irish Times. Of even greater importance, they were to be supported by the power and authority of the church. Throughout the controversy, Bishop Dignan of Clonfert remained a firm friend and supporter of mine, and warned, ‘You cannot win against the Catholic hierarchy. A few months, a year at the most, and you and your scheme will be forgotten. Look what happened to Parnell’. My helpless reply was, ‘Surely we have progressed even minimally since that time. The Mother and Child scheme will surely not be forgotten with the same finality as has been Parnell’.
On 17 March 1951, back in my department after my visit to Armagh, I reported the details of that meeting to Mr Kennedy. Immediately I was told that a special meeting of the party executive had been called by Mr MacBride. The meeting was already in session. Would I go across at once? This executive meeting, and the way in which each of us handled it, would be crucial to the survival of Clann na Poblachta.
On arrival at the meeting I quickly gathered that MacBride was denouncing me, listing my deficiencies as a Cabinet colleague and my failures as a minister and as a member of the party; I was incompetent, disloyal to the party, disloyal to my comrades, disloyal to Mr MacBride, and anti-Republican. Most inexplicable of all, for reasons of personal advancement, I had deliberately chosen to pick a row with the Roman Catholic Church over the health service.
While it was true that MacBride had recently become distant in his manner with me, he had never spoken about me to my face in such offensive terms. Understandably I was dazed by the assault. In the jargon of the republican movement, I eventually realised that I had walked into a cleverly prepared ambush. There had been no prior warning of the executive meeting. Unprepared as I was, there was no hope that I could convincingly refute the wild charges being made about me. There was the further reality that on Sean MacBride’s own admission at least 85% of that executive had been former members of the IRA; inevitably they were much more likely
to side with their old chief of staff than with myself. There was little doubt that, much in the style of the old court-martial, the ‘trial’ would conclude with all charges ‘proved against me’. Following a formal vote, passed by the ‘democratically elected’ party executive, I would be found guilty on all counts. The executive of the party would then pass a vote of ‘no confidence’ in their Minister of Health. I could not allow this to happen, although I believed that it would inevitably happen at a later executive meeting, for which I hoped to be better prepared.
It was imperative that I leave at once to fight another day. I called on the chairman for the formal agenda for the meeting. Glancing down the list of items for discussion, on a point of order I claimed that the agenda did not refer to my present indictment by Mr MacBride. This being so, and since I had important work to do in my department, I left the meeting, offering my apologies to the executive. Jack McQuillan came after me, saying that I was under personal attack by Mr MacBride and should return to defend myself. I assured Jack that as soon as I was as well prepared as possible for the inevitably hopeless battle, at the end of which I knew MacBride would gain my ‘final conviction’, I would call for an executive meeting. There could then be a fight to the finish.
11
Resignation
I RETURNED to my department convinced that MacBride’s capitulation had removed the remaining impediment to the Cabinet’s acceptance of the end of the health scheme. At the same time, MacBride had seriously underestimated the extent of the opposition the Cabinet would face from the public because of their humiliating capitulation. I did my best thereafter to make sure that every public statement or declaration, every letter to or from the principals in the struggle now taking place, be recorded in writing.
It is unlikely that the majority of bishops intended to pursue the matter so as to bring down the government. I had made it clear to the Medical Association and publicly in the Dáil that I was adamant on the no-means-test position. Within days of my eventual resignation we were given to believe that even Dr McQuaid had been prepared to compromise on a peace formula put by a representative trade union group, which included members from the North of Ireland. This was a suggestion that in order to meet the bishops’ principle that the service be paid for, we would allow for the introduction of a single nominal payment of ten shillings by the pregnant mother. This would immediately put her into full benefit for all the provisions of the scheme. I indicated my consent to this proposal and considered it to be well short of a principled compromise, on the no-means-test scheme. If it were possible to preserve the main provisions of the scheme, that nominal charge did not invalidate my no-means-test principle.
In spite of the opposition of the bishops, many members of the Catholic clergy warmly welcomed the main proposals of the scheme. Bishop Dignan, of the National Health Insurance Board, had expressed his disgust with the ‘pauper’ nature of the dispensary service. Indeed the then Minister for Health, Mr MacEntee, had sacked him for his outspokenness in protesting against the quality of poor law medicine. A parish priest friend of mine confided miserably to me, ‘It is people like myself who will have to spend the rest of our lives apologising for the behaviour of the hierarchy in destroying a good health scheme, and bringing down a government’.
With Mr MacBride finally deserting to Fine Gael, the doctors and the hierarchy, I was isolated in Cabinet; the bishops could now safely call for my final submission. It was made clear to me that the phrase used by both the Taoiseach and Mr MacBride, ‘I must satisfy the Bishops’, brooked no compromise. Their demand was for unconditional surrender on the bishops’ terms. I was equally adamant in my determination not to concede the no-means-test principle.
It is important to recall that as this complex crisis developed, an increasingly acrimonious debate between the medical profession and the Department of Health was also in progress. In the beginning memoranda were conciliatory on both sides, but fortified by the knowledge that my Cabinet colleagues had lost their nerve and their enthusiasm for the scheme, the consultants became intransigent. Yet another factor was the continuing disruptive effect of the increasingly angry Hartnett-MacBride quarrel within Clann na Poblachta.
Meanwhile it was imperative that I should maintain the pressure of work in the Department of Health to complete the vast hospital and clinic building programmes. We had to continue with the national plan to eliminate tuberculosis. There was also my role within our overall departmental programme designed to educate public opinion about the real issues involved. I instructed my personal secretary to arrange that at regular intervals of about a fortnight, in different parts of the country, and on the radio, I should outline in detail the benefits of the proposed mother and child health scheme. This I did on occasions such as the laying of foundation stones and similar non-political events. Our educational literature aimed at parents and children was distributed to all suitable outlets, schools, post offices, hospitals or garda stations. It is a measure of how little was known in the Department of Health about the opposition of the hierarchy that quite innocently, and to the intense annoyance certainly of Dr McQuaid, we had sent on 6 March copies of our literature on the mother and child health scheme to each member of the hierarchy. In the circumstances our action was considered to be a deliberate provocation.
There were cleverly-illustrated half-page advertisements in the national and provincial newspapers, packed with information and, as with the booklets and leaflets, bilingual. A deluge of education and information poured from the Department of Health in increasing intensity over a period of months. Systematically we set out to win wide support among the public for the scheme. I recall Fidel Castro’s remark, shortly after he came to power in Cuba, ‘Everyone is against me but the public’. The coalition government to their cost failed to recognise this.
To off-set the effect of this public campaign the medical consultants issued statements saying that the absence of the money relationship between the doctor and the patient would cause a deterioration in the quality of the health services. The magnificent success of the free fever and TB hospital schemes readily gave the lie to this.
A Jesuit priest, Fr Edward Coyne, wrote to the newspapers, complaining that if there were a free medical scheme ‘the standard of medical care for all would be reduced to that standard at present available to the dispensary patient’. What an implicit condemnation of the dispensary services! He went on to criticise the mother and child scheme in the authoritative Jesuit publication, Studies.
While I was having tea in the Dáil restaurant on the afternoon of 6 April 1951, a reply from the hierarchy to my memorandum on the October meeting at the Archbishop’s palace — the terms of which had been finally and belatedly transmitted to them by Mr Costello on 27 March — was handed to me by my personal secretary Dick Whyte. It was breath-taking in its assumption that the hierarchy of one religion could dictate to a sovereign government on matters of national policy. The letter went on, ‘The Hierarchy must regard the scheme proposed by the Minister for Health as opposed to Catholic social teaching’. Just as my theologian had assured me, the reply from the hierarchy made no attempt to support the deliberately misleading claim made by Archbishop McQuaid that the scheme was contrary to Catholic moral teaching.
I went straight across to the General Post Office, at that time the headquarters of Radio Eireann. It had been previously arranged that I should go on radio at peak listening time with a detailed clarification of the health scheme and its full implications. The fact that an explanatory letter to the newspapers about the health scheme had already been suppressed by the Taoiseach was an ominous indicator that our time was running out. If Costello had known of my intention to speak on the radio, he would have prevented me from doing so. Speaking in both Irish and English, my purpose was to mobilise maximum public support for the health scheme in the coming struggle.
Shortly after the broadcast, I was not surprised to be called to an emergency Cabinet meeting later that evening. From the
absence of ministerial papers in front of each minister, it was clear that there was only one item for discussion, the letter from the hierarchy. All was tense, quiet and awkward. John Costello told us that the meeting had been called so that we could hear the latest about the mother and child health scheme. Sitting down, Costello took up the letter. Clearly, for him, it was holy writ. No doubt he had already discussed his tactics with his Cabinet colleagues: I had had no information or contact with MacBride about the subject. Slowly and solemnly Costello read out the Archbishop’s letter to us all.
He then looked at me and said, ‘This must mean the end of the mother and child scheme’. All heads around the table began to nod, like those strange toy Buddhas. They agreed, oh how fervently they agreed, with the Archbishop and the Taoiseach. Costello appeared to expect their agreement and my equally enthusiastic nodding acceptance, followed by my agreement to withdraw and amend the scheme. The new scheme must be in accordance with the demands of the hierarchy. I was unable to oblige; my response was to plead with them for patience. I pointed out that the letter from the hierarchy had referred only to social teaching. Because of this, there was no reason why a conscientious Catholic could not carry on and implement the health scheme as had been agreed upon between us in Cabinet. They would not transgress against their religion as they would do were the scheme contrary to Catholic moral teaching. I sought to explain the difference between Catholic social and moral teaching, as earlier clarified to me by my theologian, but they were not interested. Fleetingly and irreverently I reflected that one Judas was bad enough but twelve of them must be some kind of record, even in Ireland.