YESTERDAY I marched into the polling booth, happy that the decent government had permitted me to take part in the complex quinquennial gestation that culminates in an expression of The People’s Will.
As usual, everybody looked as if they (yes, I know, that "they" is wrong there) were engaged in some criminal conspiracy. Shifty looks, muttering mechanical smiles. Women trying to look as if they had the remotest idea of the meaning of Irish politics. Youngsters of twenty-one coming in with a face that was intended to mean "I suppose I'll have to vote but God be with the days of me dead chief, Parnell." A general air of deceit and pretence, though I'm not sure that there is any difference between those two words. In the corner, a man that looked very like a member of the crew known as "all right thinking Irishmen" carefully reading a bound volume of Irish Timesleading articles in order to find out for whom he should vote "unless the country is to embark upon another decade of recriminations based upon a civil war that was fought at a time when a large body of the electorate was not even born". (Needless to say, I dissent from the view that what took place before a man was born can be of no interest to him.
I can think of a number of ante-natal occurrences that shouldbe of some interest to every right-thinking Irishman: a certain wedding, for instance; or the steps taken in 1914-1918 which ended all war forever, the foundation of the GAA, the emigration of Bernard Shaw, even my own fight in the eighties for the use of the "full regulator" in Irish railway practice.)
In the polling booth also I saw evidence of that dreadful pest, the man who is anxious to give the impression that he is personating himself. I will not say that he tries to look like a suspicious character, for the sole reason that I try to write decent English and I will not permit myself (for one moment) to say “suspicious character” if I mean a character who is not suspicious but whose behaviour provokes suspicions on the part of others. This man manages to sidle into the booth, avoids everybody’s eyes, starts searching his pockets and makes no attempt to vote. He is ultimately asked for his name and stammers a name out after some hesitation. No, he cannot find his card. He does not know his number. The agents immediately challenge him. A Guard hovers in the background (using the patent wings devised by my Research Bureau). Then me dacent man changes his tune, establishes his identity with devastating precision, causes a number of bystanders to identify him, casts his vote (instead of voting) and walks out leaving a very discomfited parcel of officials behind him, all wondering if they will receive solicitors’ letters the next morning. A very bad low Irish type.
Leaving the booth myself , I realised that I had once again spoilt my vote by marking Xs opposite the names I had decided to honour. I had also, of course, inserted the usual comic verse but that alone does not invalidate a voting paper. I walked home wondering why all illiterates use the complex symbol X when they put pen to paper. Are we wrong in assuming that a stroke or straight line is the simplest and most primitive literary symbol? Is it in fact more recondite and difficult than the X? Or has the X a mystical import for humans, a quality that transcends all considerations of intellect? Naturally, I do not care a thraneen which it is, it is only a self-conscious peasant like myself would raise such issues in a respectable newspaper.
I am glad it is over but for my part I will not celebrate when me man is returned. I am off the bier, as the corpse said when the drunken motorist crashed into the funeral.
The “quinquennial [...] expression of The People’s Will” here referred to was the general election of 1943, which saw big setbacks for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, and surges in support for Labour and the new small farmers’ party Clann na Talmhan. Fianna Fáil retained power, however, and, taking advantage of a Labour split, de Valera reversed his losses in a snap election less than a year later.–
FRANK McNALLY
* The MP and journalist known as “Tay Pay” was T.P. O'Connor, not T.P. O'Mahony as stated yesterday.