Splintered Sunrise

And so it is that the heavyweight finance minister ascends to the throne, in yet another uncontested election, which seems to be the in thing nowadays. Or is it a return to the grand tradition left behind with Lemass, whereby FF leaders would ‘emerge’ after the fashion of British Toryism?

Whatever about that, Biffo will make for an interesting contrast in style with Anorak Man. Of course he doesn’t have Bertie’s preternatural gift for the jovial hail-fellow-well-met stuff. But he’s a fairly substantial figure in his own right, and doesn’t have Bertie’s *ahem* negatives.

There will be, I imagine, some griping from Dublin trendies about a big culchie now leading the state’s hegemonic party. But then, a lot of that will come from the same people who used a different set of arguments about Bertie, and who would never vote FF in the first place.

And, with Bertie’s departure, would it be too much to hope for light at the end of the tribunals? Just a thought.

Veteran leaders are dropping like flies at the minute, aren’t they? Here in Norn Iron, Papa Doc has signalled his retirement, which should be due in a matter of weeks. Word from Zimbabwe indicates that Uncle Bob may have reached the end of the line. But let’s not forget our own Man for All Seasons, our European statesman, our first socialist Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.

The timing of Bertie’s departure, if not the fact of it, has taken us all by surprise. When the backslapping finishes, the question that will be asked by students of our Machiavellian leader is, “What did he mean by that?” The Phoenix is the place for that sort of theorising, so we’ll just have to wait and see if it went to press before Bertie’s announcement. [Update 5.4.08: I notice the Phoenix has indeed been caught on the hop by Bertie's timing. Sir, I salute you!]

But perhaps more interesting is the question of what Bertie will do next. Is there some big international sinecure lined up for him? President of Europe, perchance? One would hate to think that he had invaded Chad in vain. Or, if he’s forced to remain in Ireland, he could advise the Shinners on how to transform themselves into Fianna Fáil Nua, as Grizzly and the boys don’t quite seem to have the acumen for it.

Bertie may also like to take some retirement advice from his old friend Mr Tony Blair. Since standing down as British prime minister, Mr Tony has kept up a veritable whirlwind of activity. First off, someone with a keen sense of humour made him the Empire’s high-powered peace envoy for the Middle East. Then there are the multimillion-dollar directorships at Morgan Stanley and Zurich – not bad for a virtual economic illiterate. He’s launching a foundation for interfaith understanding. And next year he’s going to be a visiting professor at Yale, which confirms a lot of my opinions about Yale.

There’s also the fine example of Liverpool University’s Mr Tony Blair Chair in Peace Studies. This opens up a line of thought – maybe UCD might consider a Bertie Chair in Personal Finance?

I rather like Éamon Gilmore. Had I been a member of the Labour Party, which I’m not, I’d be quite happy with him taking over the leadership. He’s a smart guy, has some ideas, knows how to express them and isn’t hemmed in by the inherited orthodoxies of Stickiedom. On the other hand, I can’t quite figure out what he thought he was doing coming up with the idea of a no confidence motion in Bertie. Grabbing a cheap headline with a motion that was bound to fail is something you might expect from Electric Enda, who, all credit to his persistence, is still trying to put himself forward as an alternative taoiseach. But I would have hoped for a slightly more sober approach from Gilmore.

I’ve written before about my views of the Tribunal system (apologies for the repetition), and I also direct readers to WorldbyStorm on this issue. Just to recap, the Tribunals, apart from their dubious constitutionality, have become an enormous white elephant. Their main material function – apart from their political function – is to provide journos with easy copy and multimillionaire barristers with a very substantial state subsidy. With no end in sight, and a projected bill that could well top a billion euro, a sane body politic would have introduced strict anti-corruption laws (and maybe stricter ones than those currently in place are called for) and then moved to wind the Tribunals down. Unfortunately, since Des O’Malley browbeat Charlie into setting up the Beef Tribunal in 1991, no government has had the balls to get a grip on the legal eagles.

So we have this current situation with Bertie. We should reiterate that there has been no proof, nor anything like it, that Bertie has done anything illegal. Unethical and dishonourable probably, but no smoking gun of illegality has been found. All that Mahon has been able to demonstrate so far is that Bertie is a bit dodgy, a bit of a geezer, a little bit werrrr, a little bit weyyyyyy, a little bit arrrrgggh. But we knew that already. Did anyone really expect him to break down in the Dáil and wail that his entire political career had been a complete fraud?

Then there is the partisan aspect. The one thing that keeps me from straight out calling for the Tribunals to be scrapped is that that’s what the gaimbín wing of Fianna Fáil would like to happen. But that’s not to say that they don’t have a point. No matter the fact that Frank Dunlop paid off politicians of all parties; both the official opposition (Fine Gael and Labour) and the real opposition (the Irish Times) have shown a touching faith in the idea that endless exposés of “Fianna Fáil corruption” would oust the Soldiers of Fortune from power. (The gormless left of course also cling to this notion, with their little placards calling on the gardaí to arrest elected representatives.) The recent election should have proved otherwise, but I suppose that for a certain type of political mind it just proves that the Irish population get the leaders they deserve.

But there is a dynamic here that FF supporters are keenly aware of, and it’s a dynamic that undermines the credibility of the entire Tribunal system. Multiple judicial tribunals have been sitting for so many years, at such hideous expense and with so few tangible results that the only way they can be redeemed is by claiming the scalp of the Taoiseach. And, in the absence of a smoking gun, that means poking around in Bertie’s personal finances and trying to make him look so shifty that he becomes too much of a hot potato to remain in power. Trouble is, Bertie’s personal finances are so convoluted and his brass neck so tough that we could see this whole saga drag on for the rest of our natural lives. Well, maybe a few people would be satisfied with that, but it doesn’t do much for the public good.

Rud eile: No, I haven’t forgotten Gail Walker this week, she just didn’t interest me that much. We had the media’s treatment of Britney Spears, Sir Hugh Orde’s bit on the side and yet again some slagging off of the BBC. Elsewhere in the Telegraph this week, Lindy McDowell branched out from local politics to have a pop at Ahmadinejad, although not surprisingly she managed to bring the Provos into the argument. For another view of Ahmadinejad’s American adventure, you may find Justin Raimondo interesting.

More on Fianna Fáil’s excellent adventure in the North: on Radio Ulster’s Inside Politics today, SDLP deputy leader and South Belfast MP Alasdair McDonnell was almost effusive in his welcome. Now, for some curious reason, Bertie and the boys have their sights set on the 2009 local elections and after that may take a run at Stormont, but, probably at the heel of the hunt due to the FPTP electoral system, are ruling out running for Westminster.

Alasdair thinks they are being too modest. Dúirt sé: “I have no doubt they will very quickly decide that if there’s an opportunity there and a representational job to be done, they will avail of it… They are very pragmatic and very effective.” Well, pragmatic and effective are two adjectives you could apply to the Soldiers of Fortune. Do I detect, though, a nod and a wink to FF with an eye to candidate selection? Possibly – but why? Electorally speaking, Alasdair is a dead man walking – does he think being the Fianna Fáil candidate for South Belfast will be a winning strategy?

In any case, Alasdair may need a couple of extra suits if he’s planning on strutting his stuff in island-wide politics. You can’t go to the FF Ard Fheis in a jumper with a zip up it.

You can read more on the headline-grabbing FF move in Jim Fitzpatrick’s newsletter at the Beeb.

All right, so there are a few straws in the wind about political realignment in the North. We’ll start off with unionism, and the ongoing existential crisis of the Official Unionists. The DUP has been pressing the OUP for talks on an electoral pact for the next Westminster poll, and Sir Reggie isn’t ruling it out. This seems bizarre, given that Reggie has been talking up the possibility of the OUP playing an oppositional role at Stormont. It is doubly bizarre when you realise that at the last Stormont election the DUP was ahead of the OUP in seventeen out of eighteen constituencies. (The OUP pipped the DUP by 99 votes in the overwhelmingly nationalist Newry and Armagh, but that was entirely due to Paul Berry’s sports massage problem.) So we can assume that Robbo’s talk of “maximising” unionist representation boils down to the OUP withdrawing its candidates in Fermanagh/South Tyrone, West Tyrone, Mid-Ulster, South Down and possibly South Belfast. Does Reggie have a death wish? Or does he reckon that doing a deal with the Paisleyites is the only way the rump OUP can survive?

Mid-Ulster OUP MLA Billy Armstrong has at least taken this to its logical conclusion. Under the New Dispensation, Billy reckons, there is no need for two pro-agreement unionist parties, so there should be a merger. Under the present balance of forces, this would mean the OUP rump subsuming itself into the DUP.

Meanwhile, there continue to be rumblings about the possible formation of a new anti-agreement unionist party to challenge the DUP from the right. The steady trickle of resigning DUP councillors suggests there might be critical mass for at least a small party along these lines. I hope this happens, if only for the entertainment value of seeing Big Ian being called a Lundy. The problem is that the unionist ultras are a scattered and demoralised lot. They have no seats in Stormont, most of them hate each other, and their most credible leader, Bob “Cream Bun” McCartney, has now retired from politics, much to this blog’s regret. As a result, the putative leader is MEP Jim Allister, who was elected to Strasbourg on the DUP ticket to replace Big Ian. Unfortunately, Jim has all the charisma of an oven glove, so any attempt by him to assume Papa Doc’s mantle as the leader of unionism is probably doomed.

On the other side of the fence, we have the announcement that Fianna Fáil is to start organising seriously in the North, with an eye to contesting the next Stormont election. (Also, see WorldbyStorm on this.) It’s a bit of a turnaround – although Fine Gael and Irish Labour were founded as 32-county parties and shrunk back to the Free State (Labour is to some extent reversing this), FF was resolutely partitionist in its own organisation until setting up a small and reclusive cumann in Derry a couple of years back. Presumably, Bertie is still concerned about PSF eating into the FF base in the South, wants to take on the Provos at source and has found the SDLP not fit for purpose.

This really is another nail in the coffin of the South Down and Londonderry Party. Since it’s hard to see anyone in the Six, except maybe for the Derry traders who set up the SDLP in the first place, actively wanting to support FF, what we are presumably looking at is a takeover (hence Durkan not rejecting a “merger”) whereby the Attwood brothers’ vast electoral nous would be supplanted by that of PJ Mara. One assumes PJ couldn’t do any worse.

But this points up a possible alternative strategy for Sir Reggie and the boys. Why doesn’t the OUP negotiate a merger with Fine Gael? Both sit in the same Strasbourg group, both are parties with dubious long-term prospects – shouldn’t Sir Reggie and Electric Enda be natural partners?

The latest in our series of profiles of unlikely individuals takes as its subject the late Kevin Boland, which might cause readers to scratch their heads a little. Kevin, it must be said, was not an anti-capitalist, nor was he an anti-imperialist except in the limited sense of being consistently anti-British. Yet this most establishment of Irish politicos would end up as an exponent of a distinctively Irish strand of radicalism.

It was of course the explosion in the North in 1969, and the consequent Arms Non-Crisis, that threw Kevin into a serious political tailspin. Unlike Neil and Charlie, he himself had not been implicated in the arms importation scheme; nonetheless, he resigned not only his ministry, but even his Dáil seat. (Kevin was always one for standing on his honour, even at some cost to himself.) He then went further and set up a splinter party, vowing the destruction of the Fianna Fáil party he had grown up in. This was in sharp contrast to Charlie, who in Kevin’s colourful phrase ate humble pie till it was coming out of his ears, being determined, doubtless on the advice of Pádraig Ó hAnnracháin, to stay within the fold at all times and wait for his inevitable elevation.

There is a superficial version of this put about by those who have reasons to burnish the Lynch legend. The argument is – Stephen Collins recaps this in The Power Game – that Kevin was an unstable character, given to threatening resignation whenever he felt at all unhappy, and that anyway he’d always been an extreme republican. By this interpretation, the vast majority of the Fianna Fáil party prior to 1969 was “extreme republican”. You can’t explain by this why Gerry Boland had savagely suppressed militant republicanism during the Emergency, or why Kevin sat in the cabinet that interned republicans – notably Ruairí Ó Brádaigh, at the time an elected TD – during Operation Harvest.

The explanation is that the Bolands, in distinction to the Lemass technocrats, were Fianna Fáil ideologues. That is to say, they continued to take the party programme seriously. Today, the Fianna Fáil “ethos” has got pretty convoluted, and the party’s former radicalism a museum piece. But the original 1927 programme repays study – the ideas found in the La Scala speeches, the resolutions of the First Ard Fheis and the Seven Aims written into the Córú. Nowadays, the Seven Aims – which may still be in the Córú for all I know – would be as obscure as cuneiform tablets to your average FF TD, what with the economic ones being in breach of EU law, reunification being reduced to the rhetorical level and language revival not far behind it.

Make no mistake, although the New Departure of 1927 was a turn to constitutional methods, the programme was a revolutionary one, for the abolition of the Saorstát. This divided into two stages, removing the legal impedimenta to the southern state’s independence and ending partition. As we know, the first was achieved, more or less, with the enactment of the Bunreacht in 1937. The second would remain in abeyance. Then, when the northern colony collapsed and an opportunity to end partition presented itself, Fianna Fáil buckled. The question Kevin had to ask was, why?

The answer was a sobering one, about how a once radical party had become institutionalised. As Kevin would point out, quoting Seán Etchingham’s arguments in the Treaty debates, the party had accumulated decades of Free State fat. From being a movement dedicated to abolishing the state, Fianna Fáil had become one of the biggest vested interests in the state. Hence the cry that went up in 1969, “We must preserve what we have achieved down here”, and its obvious corollary, “We must restore stability up there”.

That’s how Kevin came to the position that, if FF was no longer the constitutional republican party, it needed to be replaced. He was worried that FF’s desertion would lead to the national struggle devolving to the Provos. (A lot of us thought that, although not all of us were worried about it.) This was the logic behind the Aontacht Éireann experiment, which ended in failure, notwithstanding Blaney’s Provisional Fianna Fáil being a sort of local analogue in Donegal. The failure was probably inevitable – the new party had few defectors, no resources and its political horizons were confined by the historical FF programme. There was also FF’s legendary discipline and pronounced leader cult, which led lots of party activists to tell Kevin they agreed with him, but couldn’t break from the party. And, all told, maybe in the 1970s there really wasn’t a market for a slightly constitutional republican party.

So, Kevin didn’t leave a political movement behind him, and it’s tempting to see him just as a holdover of an earlier era, a traditionalist Fianna Fáiler who couldn’t accommodate to the new technocratic age. But he did bring his old-fashioned republicanism to bear as a sharp critic of the Irish political class, and, while he never moved leftwards, he did deepen his critique over the years in some relevant ways, notably in economic policy. And anyone who’s interested in Irish political history might like to track down his books, which are all long out of print but can still be found in second-hand shops. Up Dev! is a rollicking personal account of the Arms Non-Crisis and its aftermath, scathing about the Lynch administration and told with a mordant wit that belies Kevin’s image as a dour old curmudgeon, and well deserving of a reprint. The Rise and Decline of Fianna Fáil takes in a broader historical sweep and is narrated in a more restrained style, but still useful for the student of FF. There are some minor works as well, but those two will give the reader a fair taste of the old-fashioned de Valera republicanism that tends to make de Valera’s latter-day heirs shuffle their feet in embarrassment.

Regular readers of this blog will know to expect tributes to the most unlikely people, but I would hazard a guess that the late Neil Blaney will raise a few eyebrows. I should explain at the outset that I’m not going to deal mainly with Neil’s consistently strong line on the national question, which by itself marks him out as almost unique among southern politicos, but with Neil’s standing as one of the supreme technical adepts of Irish electoral politics.

Not many people bother to read The Donegal Mafia, which is a pity, not only because it’s one of the very few attempts – possibly the first, if I’m not mistaken – to use rigorous sociological categories to analyse Irish politics, but because it provides a snapshot of the Blaney machine – the organisation crafted by old Neil in the ’30s and ’40s, and honed to perfection by Neil Óg in the ’50s and ’60s - in its pomp, when still part of the national Fianna Fáil party. This was, at its peak, a political machine that makes Bertie’s operation in Dublin Central look almost dilettantish. This was why the national party put Neil in charge of running by-election campaigns, which he did with military efficiency and an enviable record of success – Fianna Fáilers of a certain vintage will still recall the Donegal activists with awe. I never got to see the Blaneyites in operation at that time, but even in later years their independent organisation (Provisional Fianna Fáil) was deeply impressive.

The survival of an independent organisation for over 30 years is itself something of a testament to the machine. Aontacht Éireann was a failure, probably inevitably and for a number of reasons, but it was almost as if AÉ had managed to root itself locally and survive in Donegal. You could put that down to the local strength of republican traditions, but I think a big element was that, while Boland was a bit of a loner and always prone to taking stands on his personal honour, Blaney was not only a disciplinarian but also a disciplined party man. Kevin would often recount with exasperation how Neil wouldn’t take any decision without first getting the go-ahead from the Delphic Oracle, alias the North-East Donegal Comhairle Dáilcheanntair.

This sort of cohesion probably accounts for how the clientelist system developed up in Donegal. You often hear Fine Gael technocrats complaining about how TDs have no time for legislation because they’re tied up with running clinics to deal with the trivial complaints of the great unwashed. Believe it or not, that was sorted out in Donegal, as a pragmatic reaction to Neil (after his appointment to cabinet) spending much of his time in Dublin. Decades before dual mandate legislation was ever heard of, there was a division of labour with Neil holding the Dáil seat and his younger brother Harry sitting as his personal plenipotentiary on the county council. But the division of labour went beyond that – such was the discipline, cohesion and strict hierarchy of the machine that constituents would prioritise their complaints. For a trivial complaint, like the proverbial leaking roof, you wouldn’t bother Neil but would take your case to a councillor or party activist. Neil would be held in reserve for the big problems, the ones only Neil could solve.

At root, though, the secret of the Blaney machine lay not in Neil’s technical proficiency as a politician, great though that was, but in the political spirit animating his soldiers. For the Blaneyites, who would take part in elections in Derry as easily as in Donegal, politics never ceased to be a national crusade. And there’s a lesson here – political parties are voluntary organisations, and no matter how draconian the regime the worst penalty you can inflict on someone is to tell them they can’t come to meetings or pay dues any more. A really effective machine comes into being where the men and women at the grass roots are inspired to follow a great political cause. People who think that electoral success is an end in itself can’t really comprehend the mindset that sees it as a mere by-product of a bigger struggle.

Following on from the Dublin government’s endowment of the Mr Tony Blair Chair of Irish Studies at Liverpool University, I couldn’t help but notice Dermot Ahern’s announcement of a Conflict Resolution Unit, aimed at solving the problems of the world with reference to Ireland’s shining example. Now this won’t be a piddly wee interpretive centre, but a fully-fledged unit of the DFA with a €25m annual budget. There will further be a linked-in high-powered academic centre with the mission to train up peace professionals. This will allow the Dominion of ‘Éire’ to compete with the Norwegians in the peace business, and further burnish the reputation of our European Statesman. Here’s an idea – why not name the academic wing the Bertie Centre for Shock and Awe?

While we’re on Bertie, I loved this cracking little Swiftian diatribe from Diarmuid Doyle in the Turbine. Our Taoiseach really is almost beyond satire.

I’m not of an age to recall the Cumann na nGaedheal government in 1927 using the bankruptcy laws to deprive Jim Larkin of his Dáil seat, but it’s an integral part of the political folklore that forms my background. Maybe that’s why I find it difficult to be censorious in the case of Beverley Flynn, or maybe it’s just a sense of mischief. Then of course there’s the basic democratic principle that the people of Mayo have spoken, only a few short weeks ago, and if the people of Mayo want Bev to represent them, as they evidently do, then they’re entitled to have her.

As things stand, her settlement with RTÉ in respect of her failed libel action in 2001 means that, instead of being pressed for the full €2.8m, Bev will commit to paying considerably less than half of that, which is still a penalty not to be sneezed at. There is nothing odd or suspicious about RTÉ reaching a settlement in the interests of the licence-payers. Faced with a choice between a settlement that will bring in a million quid and change, and pressing a bankruptcy action that could have seen them struggling to recover anything, any accountant worth his salt would have said, Go for the settlement. It’s the same principle as a company settling a personal injury claim that they could have legitimately contested, because often paying off a plaintiff makes more sense than risking going before a jury.

What complicates this, of course, is Bertie’s statement of a little while back holding out the prospect of Bev recovering the Fianna Fáil whip, and even looking at junior ministerial office a little way down the road. Fine Gael are hailing this as evidence that the RTÉ Authority has been nobbled. Somehow I doubt that. Not only are the RTÉ Authority not renowned for being a panel of FF stooges, but it would be deeply uncharacteristic of Bertie to do anything so blatantly. Had Bertie really been twisting arms at RTÉ, he would have kept very very quiet on the Flynn case.

But the FG reaction speaks volumes. If I understand Electric Enda correctly, RTÉ settling with Bev is proof positive of political interference. One assumes that the non-political course of action would have been to have Bev declared bankrupt, trigger a by-election in Mayo that FG would almost certainly win, and play merry hell with the coalition arithmetic in Leinster House. It’s the authentic response of a party that believes that it rightfully owns the state, which is only being illegitimately squatted by Fianna Fáil. Yes, those old Cumann na nGaedheal instincts don’t lie far below the surface.

Okay then, cup of tea at the ready. Aimee Mann playing. Magnolia soundtrack, if I’m not mistaken. Just what the doctor ordered. Now, where was I?

So, let’s return to aspects of Irish life that our Anglo left don’t get, and there are few better illustrations of this than corruption. You will recall last year’s controversy over Bertie’s mysterious dig-out, when at the height of the storm Fianna Fáil suddenly rocketed five points in the polls, and Irish Times editrix Geraldine Kennedy was heard to exclaim “What kind of country are we?” Meanwhile, the innocent Dublin pedestrian will have noticed small knots of revolutionary socialists bearing placards calling on the feds to arrest elected representatives, which may seem odd behaviour for people usually averse to policing.

Let your mind go back to the early 1990s, when Charlie was forced to resign and then Albert found himself under some pressure over his own dealings. At the time, the Irish left were very much taken with the concurrent Tangentopoli scandals in Italy, and the collapse of the Christian Democrats. It was confidently predicted – in particular by Swiss Toni – that Fianna Fáil would go the same way, blithely ignoring the significant differences between Italy and Ireland. The broad masses, in this scenario, would rise up and kick out FF, and the whole political scene would be thrown into turmoil.

Actually, it’s probably a good thing that Ireland isn’t Italy. The Italians dumped the Christian Democrats, and got Berlusconi (the structural analogue of Dr Sir Anthony O’Reilly becoming taoiseach) in coalition with the neo-fascists. Meanwhile, much to the consternation of both Geraldine Kennedy and Kieran Allen, the great unwashed have failed to be stirred by tales of FF corruption to rise up and cast off their oppressors. In fact, the dopey feckers keep re-electing FF.

Nevertheless, some of that old hope still lingers, which accounts for the reverence our liberals and leftists have for the tribunals. We open the papers and find some people who ought to know better hailing Judges Flood and Mahon as the Irish body politic’s answer to Batman and Robin – or, at the very least, Power Man and Iron Fist. Yet, as Vincent Browne points out in the current Village, the tribunal system is a scandal in its own right. Not least in the fact that the tribunals may be in breach of the Bunreacht, although one would need the gift of telepathy to guess how the Supreme Court will act.

Beyond that, consider that there have been multiple judicial tribunals running for as long as anyone can remember, with no end in sight. Nobody is going to jail. Nobody looks like going to jail. There are serious questions about leakage. There is a clear over-reliance on dodgy witnesses, not least Tom Gilmartin and my old friend Frank “The Canary” Dunlop. The overall costs of this judicial circus will be, at the very least, several hundreds of millions of euros, and may very well pass the billion mark. In essence, an enormous state subsidy to multimillionaire barristers, and such a blatant one that even the Law Library is getting restive. Those unionists who give off about the Bloody Sunday Inquiry don’t know they’re born.

There is a further, political aspect to this. The tribunal juggernaut is so clearly out of control that the only way it can justify its existence is by claiming the head of the Taoiseach. This is not lost on Fianna Fáil supporters, who take an understandably jaundiced view of the whole tribunal setup, and as this imperative becomes ever more obvious, the credibility gap grows.

One could argue that the tribunals served their purpose years ago. The law has been tightened up and public life is infinitely freer of backhanders than it was in the 1980s. Not least, the current media culture has sounded the death knell for the kind of “strokes” that used to be common – not many TDs nowadays would even attempt to square a constituent’s drink-driving charge. This is not to say that there isn’t a need for some kind of watchdog, nor that there aren’t scandals that need investigating. But it may be past time to conclude that the tribunals aren’t doing us any quantifiable good. And, Lord knows, if the purpose now is to arrive at a rational explanation of Bertie’s personal finances, they could be running till doomsday.