Clann na Poblachta by Eithne MacDermott Cork 248pp, £40/£12.95
As Eithne MacDermott has it, Clann na Poblachta "was born in high drama, lived on the edge for much of its early political existence and came to grief in unbelievably theatrical circumstances." How the party rose and why it fell are the subject of her book. It's a story rich in detail which, fifty years on, will be unfamiliar to all but a few old hands. Yet even those who have barely heard of Sean MacBride or Noel Browne, the Mother and Child Scheme or the eradication of TB, will find it resonant with issues that are as fresh - or festering - as ever.
The party's rise was sudden, and even sympathetic commentators like Eithne MacDermott still find it surprising. Formed in July 1946, it won two out of three by-elections on one day in 1947 and, in the 1948 general election, attracted 175,000 or 13 per cent of the votes. It won ten seats and was disappointed not to have taken twenty.
But sixteen years of Fianna Fail rule had come to an end, MacBride and Browne were ministers in the state's first coalition, and a government that embraced Fine Gael, Labour, National Labour, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmhan and Independents was to last over three years and chalk up some impressive achievements.
The nonsense about the need for strong, single-party government had been exposed. De Valera, who had always said coalition was impossible, took off on a world tour against partition. His old friend, Archbishop Mannix of Melbourne, was so shocked by the result that he didn't speak at all for two days.
Eithne MacDermott's feeling for the 1940s and 1950s is as strong as her admiration for at least some of Clann's leaders. (Too much, she says, is written by people who have no sympathy with their topic.) Her account of postwar discontent, over health, housing, wages, prices, jobs and emigration, is an indictment of Fianna Fail's social record.
Clann's republicans had another grievance. De Valera's government had presided over the internment and execution of IRA members during the war. MacBride, who had been Chief of Staff before becoming a barrister, had exposed the barbaric conditions in which one of his successors, Sean McCaughey, died in jail.
Clann drew support from others who felt ignored or betrayed: national teachers who had been on strike for seven bitter months; trade unionists and housewives who backed the Lower Prices Council whose meetings attracted crowds of up to 100,000 with demands for hot dinners for children and food subsidies. (The Special Branch was on to the Irish Housewives Association.)
Ms McDermott makes excellent use of contemporary police reports, as well as official and private papers. The backgrounds and overlapping memberships of groups which found a home in Clann are filled in. And there's a memorable description of Sean MacEntee quivering with excitement over a particularly subversive morsel.
The footnotes alone cover fifty pages. One tells how MacBride wondered why usually bellicose delegates to an IRA convention seemed anxious to get away. They were hoping to get to an All-Ireland semi-final. "I see," growled MacBride. "So a game of football is more important than the future of the Irish republic." The cultural commissars of Lenadoon have put Donegal Celtic right on that.
The conventional explanation for the collapse of Clann na Poblachta blames naked displays of power by the bishops, of weakness by the coalition and of wilfulness by Noel Browne. Not quite. The bishops scored an own goal in 1951, from a treacherous cross by the doctors. It was MacBride who funked their challenge first, but not for the last time; and, if Browne was wilful, who will now say that he was wrong?
Eithne MacDermott challenges the conventional wisdom. She shows a party that was divided from the start. On one side, MacBride with his republicans, used to debating the theology of abstention but never authority; on the other, Browne, Jack Mc Quillan and their allies, who questioned everything but the need to make social progress.
Of course, there was a personal crux and Ms McDermott doesn't shirk it. By April 1951 MacBride and Browne could hardly stand the sight of one another. And more experienced, or more level-headed, politicians would have found a way around their differences. The party could have survived. This book helps us to understand the contribution that it made while it lasted.