After many months of prevarication, Hugh Linehan and I finally recorded in July a much anticipated (by us, anyway) podcast series on the intertwined political careers and intense personal rivalry of Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey – the great Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil figures of the 1970s and 1980s. The series ran over recent weeks in the usual Wednesday morning slot of the Inside Politics podcast – you’ll get them on irishtimes.com or wherever you get your podcasts, as they say – and concluded this week.
Those with memories of the time might enjoy the romp through the – sometimes barely believable – events, while those of a fresher vintage might learn about the politics which eventually led to the transformed politics we have today. Forget the past and you lose an eye, as the Russian proverb says.
Charlie versus Garret, part one: Origins of a rivalry
Throughout the 1980s, two men dominated the Irish political landscape. Charles Haughey and Garret FitzGerald embodied and articulated very different visions of Ireland and its future. Born a year apart, one a Northsider, one a Southsider, both sons of Civil War veterans, divided by social class, personality and beliefs, they came to epitomise their two respective parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. In the first instalment of a special three-part Inside Politics podcast series, Pat Leahy and Hugh Linehan trace their stories from childhood to the early stages of their political careers until the end of the 1970s when they each rise to become party leader. Produced by Declan Conlon.
Mostly it’s just a great yarn. But consideration of their careers also yields lessons upon which today’s politicians could usefully ruminate.
1 Leaders matter
Haughey and FitzGerald both attracted intense devotion among their supporters, driving up support for their parties; at one stage, they were regularly getting more than 80 per cent of the entire general election vote between them. More than that, though, the two men sort of personified their party’s view of themselves; Haughey was Fianna Fáil, and FitzGerald was Fine Gael.
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Political loyalties, for most people, are less tribal these days, but leaders remain important. It is hard to imagine that any other of the available candidates would have revived Fianna Fáil and saved it from first obscurity and then extinction in the way Micheál Martin has, leading it back to Government in a transformed political landscape. Martin has often had a scratchy relationship with his TDs, but he has been more popular and at ease with both the broader party membership and, eventually, with the public. In the election to come, he will be Fianna Fáil’s chief asset.
Since Simon Harris became leader, Fine Gael’s fortunes have been transformed, and the party now approaches the election – and indeed, political life in general – with a confidence that would have been unimaginable less than six months ago. Harris’s challenge will be to translate his new energy vibe into something more substantial and sustainable both before and after the election. But there is no doubt that the change of leadership has revived Fine Gael.
For Sinn Féin, the question of its possible recovery from the disappointment of the local and European elections is intimately tied up with its leader. Last month, Mary Lou McDonald told reporters that her party’s post-election message to her was that “they want me to be my absolute and authentic self”. She later enlarged on the theme to Newstalk’s Anton Savage: “Our activist base has told me that they want to hear the authentic, full-throttle Mary Lou” – third-person self-referral danger signs here – “the kind of straightforward, plain-spoken person that I am”.
For many people, of course, the advice to be their “authentic” selves is fraught with danger; for some it is plainly inadvisable. But the authentic Mary Lou – as seen for example during the 2020 general election campaign – has a good political track record. Whether she can recover that form is one of the most important political questions of the autumn. Certainly it is hard to see a Sinn Féin revival if she doesn’t.
2 The past is a different country
Halfway through the second episode, Linehan observed that to his children, it seems as if the entire country in the 1980s was living through an episode of Fr Ted. It underscores how much it has changed today. In the different country that was the Ireland of the 1970s and 1980s, Haughey and FitzGerald built unprecedented followings because they understood it, in all of its complexity and contradiction, all its despair, desire for something better, and dissimulation.
Haughey understood the ambiguity many people felt about the Northern conflict. He also knew that many people would tolerate unanswered questions about his wealth. FitzGerald understood the deep yearning of middle class urbanites to be modern, European, and (at least a bit) more secular.
The leaders who will prosper in the coming political contests are those who can intuit a similar understanding of where the country really is in 2024.
Charlie versus Garret, part two: Scandal and strife in 1980s Ireland
Pat Leahy continues the story of the rivalry between Fine Gael's Garret FitzGerald and Fianna Fáil's Charles Haughey, the defining politicians of their era. This episode traces their dominance within their parties and the electoral battles they fought as they drove Ireland's politics from the late 1970s into the early 1980s. The story weaves together the efforts to fix Ireland's waning economy, Haughey's controversial leadership style and methods, Fitzgerald's reformist agenda, and the socio-political climate of the time, marked by significant events including the Troubles, the Stardust Fire and the Falklands War.
3 There is no alternative to accepting reality
The two great failures of the independent Irish State – the underperforming economy and the conflict in Northern Ireland – dominated the political agenda then. Both Haughey and FitzGerald contributed to those failures – and both then took important steps towards their eventual resolution. But only after they accepted the grim reality of where the country was.
FitzGerald accepted that any solution to the North must involve the British government and that meant accepting the existence of Northern Ireland and its unionist majority. Haughey understood that Dublin must talk to the men of violence in the IRA if the violence was to cease. These moves paved the way for what was to come.
Like much of the western world, the country went into an economic slump in the second half of the 1970s. Unlike much of the western world, it stayed in it for the best part of the decade. Governments led by both FitzGerald and Haughey knew what had to be done to fix the public finances and set the conditions for economic growth – but they lacked the political will and the capacity to take the tough measures that would achieve it. It was not until Haughey’s 1987 minority government that the public finances were brought under control; two and a half decades of growth followed. The absolute priority of running a strong economy and the need to control the public finances – whatever the external environment – is just as strong today as it was then. The lesson is that you must accept reality if you wish to change it.
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