An Irishman’s Diary about election candidates and their families

As election day draws near, spare a thought for the great unsung heroes of such campaigns, the candidates’ families. They are the unacknowledged slaves to someone else’s dream. It can be a nightmare.

I remember it well. My father Tom McGarry was first elected to Roscommon County Council (for Fianna Fáil) in 1974. Soon afterwards he had the town in uproar. Putting the case for a swimming pool he went just that bit too far. He said Ballaghaderreen needed a pool “because there are people in the town who haven’t had a bath since the midwife rubbed them down with the sponge”. It did not go down well.

We didn’t get the pool.

The family was always dragged in for his canvasses. He was good at it and if he got a fraction of votes promised he’d have topped the poll every time. Lesson 1: never trust the electorate, just full of frauds and liars.

You also need to be careful out there, as my father himself found out in the 1973 general election campaign. A candidate that year was Dr Hugh Gibbons who, it was decided in Dublin, should have north Roscommon to himself with outgoing minister for foreign affairs, Athlone-based Brian Lenihan, having the rest.

Dr Gibbons’s great appeal lay in him being a member of the last county team to win a senior All-Ireland title. (In 1944. Shhh!)

Post office

At the time Frenchpark village was riven over the local post office. It was expected the then Fianna Fáil government would “award” it to a local shopkeeper and party stalwart. It didn’t happen. He was apoplectic and planned spectacular revenge on the first party candidate to come through his door.

That was Dr Gibbons, accompanied by my father.

As they entered to canvass his vote, Mr Apoplectic reached beneath his counter for the large chamber pot resting in peace there. He poured its matured contents over the hapless candidate.

It may have been some consolation to Dr Gibbons later that he won the seat but, in an example of strategy which can go atrociously wrong, Brian Lenihan became the first Cabinet minister in the history of the State to lose his seat in a general election.

Politics

My father faced defeats of his own. He stood for the Dáil in 1981 and had expected to get party backing. He loved the cut and thrust of politics and was rarely behind the door in dishing it out. He once described fellow Fianna Fáil councillors Seán Doherty and Terry Leyden as “two half-wits, who wouldn’t make a decent wit between them”. So Terry told me.

In 1981 party headquarters decided there would be just two candidates in Roscommon and those would be the “half-wits”. My father was livid and, out of purest spite, stood as an Independent. He hadn’t a hope. We knew it, but were never sure he knew it. So we set off on a daft wild goose campaign all over the county. He got about 600 votes.

Where his council seat was concerned his closest shave was in 1985. Again he stood as an Independent, having fallen out with the party, once more. As he put it, modestly, in a letter to the Roscommon Herald, "my Fianna Fáil colleagues don't know whether I'm for them or against them. Sometimes I'm both, which isn't easy, but for a man of my capabilities it is no bother."

He survived a marathon count to retain the seat by one vote. There was a recount and it held. He was elated and in another letter to the Herald he thanked Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil "who so generously and intentionally carried all my voters in their cars to the polling stations as I had no transport and no personating agents arranged at the booths". Not true. We kids were his personating agents.

One loyal henchman was Ray Devine. He ended his letter “May the Devine assistance remain with us and may the soles of the defeated candidates rest in pieces.”

He lost his seat at the following local elections despite the reserved if inspiring slogan on his posters: “Vote McGarry No 1 – the man who put a roof over everyone who needed it in Co Roscommon.”

As usual, there was a grain of truth in what he claimed. Part of his job as a health inspector was to get old houses reconstructed or rebuilt, something he did all over the county with great energy.

Banter

But he discovered there was life after politics and the banter continued. A regular sparring partner was Sonny Kenny. Once, as they were leaving the graveyard after a funeral, he turned to Sonny and said: “Kenny, what age are you now?” “Eighty-five,” said Sonny. My father’s retort was: “Sure it isn’t worth your while to go home.”

He died himself in 1999 and is buried in Ballaghaderreen, in a new part of the graveyard. His cattle broke in there once while it was still a field. They wandered into the cemetery and across some graves. An outraged woman confronted him about the disgrace of it all as he chased the cattle out. He responded: “The only one complaining is you.”

He rests there himself now with the other uncomplaining ones, and we have had peace at every election since.