Free as a bird

THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:YOU COULDN'T make it up. Pee Flynn at the wheel of a sports car, bowling down an empty road, the wind in his hair, manic grin firmly in place. No question of looking where he's going. Oh, and needless to say, it isn't his car. It is, according to the caption, a 1923 Hupmobile owned by a Tom O'Neill from Dublin.

As an image of the madness that was to pass for Fianna Fáil governance in the years to come, it’s stunningly prescient – even if it resembles a digital mock-up from a Hitchcock movie that never was made.

The picture ran on the front page of The Irish Times in autumn 1991. As minister for the environment in Charles Haughey’s government – a reward for his loyalty to Haughey in the Fianna Fáil leadership contest of 1979 – Flynn had just opened the Shankill-Bray bypass. It was one of our first glamorous big roads – and, as anyone who lives nearby will tell you, an immense improvement on the old, winding, perpetually clogged road, that has now been recolonised by walkers, schoolchildren and dogs.

Hence the smiling minister, the wind in the hair and all the rest of it.

Driving into a glamorous, wide-open future. Or, as the caption puts it, “In the driver’s seat . . . ” Free as a bird.

The body language of the person in the passenger seat, however, suggests another story altogether – refusing to acknowledge either the camera or the joke, face resolutely set forward – and a slim news item in the column to the immediate right of the photo gives the political game away.

Albert Reynolds is planning to mount another challenge to Haughey’s leadership of Fianna Fáil – and Pee, now one of Reynolds’s most vociferous supporters, is being tipped for high office should the palace coup succeed.

Indeed, having been sacked by Haughey shortly after this picture was taken, within 12 months Pee Flynn was in the driver’s seat at the Department of Justice.

Justice. It’s one of those words – like “loyalty” – to which the history of the Fianna Fáil party gives a whole new meaning.

Arminta Wallace

irishtimes.com/archivePublished on October 25th, 1991 Photograph by Peter Thursfield