Breda O’Brien: Des Hanafin transcended media caricature

In John Hanafin's eulogy for his father, the former senator Des Hanafin, he mentioned that he had died on St Thomas More's feast day, his father's great hero and the "man for all seasons".

The playwright Robert Bolt chose the title A Man for All Seasons from something written about More by Richard Whittington, an obscure Tudor grammarian. "For where is the man (in whom is so many goodly virtues) of that gentleness, lowliness, and affability, and as time requires, a man of marvellous mirth and pastimes and sometime of steadfast gravity – a man for all seasons."

More famously refused to compromise his conscience, even to please his king. Des Hanafin also lived according to his conscience, even when it cost him.

But those who knew him saw in him the other qualities described by Whittington – good humour, affability, a sense of mischief but also great sensitivity and remorse, particularly if he thought he had wronged someone.

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He lived for his family, for his beloved Mona, his children and his grandchildren, but also for the good of the wider community.

I did not know Des Hanafin well, as I met him only a couple of times. But I wonder how much more attention would have been paid to his death by the media had he been less of a man of conviction and more a man of convenient views?

As the huge turnout at his funeral attested, he was more complex, more humane and more courageous than the simplistic caricature of him as some kind of arch-conservative moral policeman.

Extraordinary career

He had a quite extraordinary political career, starting as a county councillor in 1955 in Thurles, and including nearly three decades as a senator.

He had the trust of Jack Lynch, who made him responsible for fundraising, at a time when there was great unease within Fianna Fáil at the rise of the so-called mohair suit brigade, epitomised by the brash young Charles Haughey, who was behaving like a country squire, riding out with the Ward Union Hunt in his top hat.

An Irish Times profile published in 1969 records how bitterly offended some in his party were by Haughey's fondness for such "ascendancy" pastimes, with no visible means of supporting them. Lynch also worried about how beholden Fianna Fáil was becoming to property and business interests.

The sad thing is that the personal courage, the lack of personal animosity and the generous, gregarious spirit of Des Hanafin is less and less often found in Irish public life today

Mary Hanafin, Des's daughter, recalled how much it meant to him that Lynch had faith in him, given Hanafin's alcoholism.

Des Hanafin was open about his addiction. Although 50 years sober when he died, he had been a legendary drinker. As proprietor of the Anner Hotel in Thurles he dipped into the till to fund benders for his friends and himself. On one occasion, when the till was empty, he sold the till.

Inevitably, he lost the hotel. Despite that dubious record, Lynch’s faith in the recovering alcoholic was repaid. When Haughey became taoiseach, he put immense pressure on Hanafin to hand over the “black book” – the list of donors.

Hanafin refused, insisting that the accounts would have to be audited first. He may have sold his own till at the height of his drinking, but he was not going to let Haughey dip his hand into Fianna Fáil’s till.

That took courage. Few people stood up to Haughey, but Hanafin did. Oddly enough, they became friends later. Hanafin was incapable of holding a grudge. Perhaps it was the spirituality of Alcoholics Anonymous, or his own strong Catholic faith, but he did his best to be on good terms with everyone, even those with whom he had strong moral disagreements.

Campaign chairman

His political expertise and his absolute conviction about the value of every human life made him uniquely fitted to be chair of the campaign to add the eighth amendment to the Constitution.

Hanafin may not have been a saint like his hero More, but he was a prophet. Not a prophet in the modern sense of foretelling the future, although he was not bad at that, either, but in the biblical sense of being unafraid to stand up for justice.

That makes him sound like someone who specialised in thundering denunciations and holier-than-thou proclamations. A real prophet is very conscious of his own frailty, and Hanafin was more conscious than most of his weaknesses.

As a recovering alcoholic, his strong views were coupled with a tolerant and non-judgmental approach to individuals. Even though his directness was legendary, he never wanted to give gratuitous offence.

He was not motivated by puritanism or self-righteousness but by genuine concern for the weakest. When, in 2016, an independent actuarial report commissioned by the Pro-Life Campaign showed that the eighth amendment had saved an estimated 100,000 lives, he was deeply moved.

As Éamon Ó Cuív said in his graveside oration, for Des Hanafin, “elected office was, as it should be, only a means to the greater end of espousing the values he held and trying to persuade others to follow him”.

The sad thing is that the personal courage, the lack of personal animosity and the generous, gregarious spirit of Des Hanafin is less and less often found in Irish public life today.