Tough, humorous Dick Spring was his own man

I might as well declare my bias right away. I believe Dick Spring to have been the outstanding politician of his generation, with a number of unique achievements to his name. But one stands out for me, and it is not often mentioned. The politics of Ireland today is, in essence, the politics of social democracy. He shifted the centre to the left.

I can still remember the night I saw John Bruton and Bertie Ahern, during their great debate at the end of the general election, arguing over which of them was the man to protect essential services and to ensure an end to marginalisation.

John Bruton in particular was a revelation, the conversion from Christian Democrat to Social Democrat sudden and complete (although I think I've noticed a slight drift backwards since!). That was the night I realised that the agenda Dick Spring had made was the dominant one, even though he and his party were about to receive a drubbing in the election.

It has often occurred to me that the reason Dick Spring was resented so much in certain quarters was that he achieved so much with so little.

I can still remember Fine Gael's horror in 1984 at the thought of a Labour Party attorney general (how could somebody from Labour, who probably didn't know which hand to hold his fork in, possibly lead the Bar?) That was 10 years before Dick Spring broke through the Iveagh House barrier.

One of the previous occupants (Gerry Collins, I think) had installed two large flags behind his desk, the Tricolour and the European flag. Dick suggested that he would like to see the Starry Plough added, and that he was looking forward to Labour Party socials in the Iveagh House ballroom. There were anxious convulsions before it was realised that he had a sense of humour.

But the same people who greeted his arrival in Iveagh House with considerable trepidation came to his office in tears the day he resigned from government in 1994. In a relatively short time, the intense relationships that his work as minister for foreign affairs had necessitated had enabled normally aloof civil servants to realise that they were working with a person of rare quality.

You won't find too many public servants who have worked with Dick Spring willing to describe him as arrogant. The best quality I observed in him, over 15 years, was that he was as willing to learn at the end as he was at the start.

Those who describe him as aloof and dependent on "unelected advisers" obviously don't know the wide range of people from whom he takes advice, sometimes even at the cost of driving his unelected advisers wild with frustration.

I've often thought the key to understanding Dick Spring lies in Kerry. I went to see him there last Wednesday and among the things I said to him was that it had always been my impression that he would end up living and working in Dublin. He looked at me in astonishment. "Why would anyone want to leave here?" he asked.

And its not difficult to see, when you realise the relationship between him and his "real people", that the hardest thing he would ever have to give up would be the chance to represent the people of Kerry.

I suppose it is possible to divide Dick Spring's career as leader of the Labour Party into roughly three equal periods of five years. At the end of the first phase it was widely believed he had almost no qualities of leadership, and that he couldn't possibly survive. At the end of the second, it was universally accepted that he could do no wrong. And by the end of the third, most fair people know that he's human; that he's done remarkable things, got most things right and a few things wrong, and that he deserves the respect he has earned.

In that first phase, he spent most of his time trying to prevent things happening. At a time of acute economic austerity, his priorities were to prevent deeper cuts in health and welfare spending than those being proposed, to prevent more services being cut, more jobs lost, and so on.

FOR example, during the early stages of the first phase he was presented with a choice between 4,000 lay-offs in local authorities or the introduction of service charges. As everyone knows, the service charges haunted us long after people had forgotten about the 4,000 jobs that were saved.

By definition, if you prevent something from happening, it's hard to claim or expect publicity or credit. There's no point in telling someone who is protesting at the length of a health service queue that it could have been longer. As a result, there were very few monuments at the end of that first period to Labour's intervention. That doesn't mean the intervention wasn't real.

That first period of government was stymied by an ideological stand-off between the parties. It might have been different if both parties had been willing to challenge their own constituencies. But right from the beginning, Garret FitzGerald and Fine Gael categorically ruled out any possibility of taxing wealth or property in any real way. Our response was to oppose the major cuts in public spending that were probably just as necessary.

He almost lost the battle for the party at that stage. We went through a period of intense internal warfare, with columns drawn up on both sides of the coalition question. I've never known whether coalition was the issue, or just a handy talisman for a battle over the soul of the party. Dick Spring had to compromise a lot to win that battle in the end, and he also had to learn a lot about organisation.

Every Wednesday night for nearly two years, two small groups of people met in different parts of Leinster House, one led by Dick Spring and the other by Emmet Stagg, preparing in the most systematically possible way for the final showdown at the party's Tralee conference.

Such was the bitterness between the factions that I still find it astonishing that some of the principal protagonists have now become genuine friends. I admitted at yesterday morning's PLP meeting that it was I who, back in the mid-1980s, had blown up an Irish Times headline (from a historical piece about Robert Emmet) on the photocopier and hung it over Emmet Stagg's desk. The headline read "Emmet hung, drawn, quartered in Thomas Street".

At the same time, the work that Dick Spring and others (especially Barry Desmond) were doing on the floor of the Dail was creating a daily stir. Dick Spring's unremitting attacks on the culture of Haugheyism required courage in its own way, and I believe his role in the parliamentary defeat of that culture has never been properly recognised.

It was also laying the ground work for the great successes of the period, in the Robinson election, the local elections of 1991, and the general election of 1992.

The most remarkable achievement, at the time, in some ways is that we entered government in 1992 totally united. That was the first time that had happened, and it was just as well. When you're on a roller-coaster, it is wise to be well strapped in.

Others have their own view of the Dick Spring of that period: grouchy and arrogant are two terms that are often used. I remember different things.

Dick Spring and John Foley giving the president of the free world a golfing lesson. Dick Spring telling Europe's foreign ministers, at four in the morning, that anyone who thought Ireland was going to cave in to some "rough trade" and settle for fewer structural funds than we were entitled to had another think coming. Dick Spring travelling through the night, and then doing a full day in clinics around Kerry. Dick Spring, with Willy Scally and Greg Sparks, mounting a highly effective rearguard action against a proposal to give very substantial tax-breaks to very rich "ex-pats".

In the end, I remember Dick Spring as a rounded person, private yet accessible, tough and humorous, every inch his own man. He'll enjoy the next few years, and I wouldn't be surprised if he raises a few media eyebrows yet.

Fergus Finlay is political director of the Labour Party