During the presidential election of 1990, the campaign of Fianna Fáil candidate and front-runner Brian Lenihan was plunged into crisis. It had emerged there was a recording of him admitting to making phone calls to Áras an Uachtaráin in 1982 to try to persuade president Patrick Hillery not to dissolve the Dáil after the Fine Gael-Labour coalition had lost a budget vote. The idea was that his party leader Charles Haughey could form an alternative government without a general election.
Lenihan was now denying he had made the calls. As the heat intensified, Fianna Fáil (FF) went into battle mode. Following a television performance that exposed the conflicting accounts, Lenihan travelled to Cork and recalled: “It was almost as if the tape business had galvanised Fianna Fáil supporters and friends in a very real way. It was then that I began to realise that the Fianna Fáil organisation had been quite complacent up to this, but now the sleeping giant was awake when one of their own was clearly in danger.”
As another candidate, Mary Robinson, moved into contention, some FF stalwarts became aggressive and even hysterical. As the political journalist Dick Walsh characterised it, FF’s instinct was to behave “like an overbearing heavyweight in late-night company who cannot see how anyone can take a different view, and, in certain circumstances, why anyone should be allowed to do so”.
FF senator Mick Lanigan declared: “On election night we want to see Fine Gael blood flowing and Labour and Worker’s Party blood. They have come from the gutters to the sewers to beat Brian Lenihan. And you all know that the only people who live in sewers are rats.” FF TD John Browne said Robinson “is pro-divorce, pro-abortion and pro-contraception”, adding: “Is she going to have an abortion referral clinic in Áras an Uachtaráin?”
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Amid such farcical ferocity, Lenihan’s campaign became rockier and he was sacked by taoiseach Charles Haughey at the behest of FF’s coalition partner, the Progressive Democrats. There was still optimism, however, that he could win the day and he was determined to continue on the back of the strength of the “giant”.
In 2000, the FF party archives were donated to UCD. The papers underline how it built its unmatchable grassroots and canvassing prowess through exceptional organisational fastidiousness. This involved its parish, regional and national structures, as well as its local committees and organisers and youth wing. They were guided by the party’s so called “holy books” of branch and electoral organisation.
It also published rule books for canvassers. One such 20-page example from 1981 instructed its voters to “vote for all Fianna Fáil candidates in order of your choice and then stop”. It insisted “all parties are not the same”, furthering this point by stating: “Each has a different set of policies. Fianna Fáil has always represented Irish people from all walks of life. Factory workers, farmers, young and old people, trade union members and businessmen can all identify with the policies of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil represents a policy that faces up to reality and delivers what is best for all Irish people.”
The challenge facing Micheál Martin, when he became the party’s leader in 2011, was to contend with the slaying of the giant, as happened in that year’s general election. It was widely predicted he would be the first FF leader not to be taoiseach. He confounded such expectations by presiding over a party recovery, but in a much more fractured political landscape, with a reduced range of voters and without the historic swagger. Yet two aspects of FF’s historic effectiveness remained relevant to Martin, now the second-longest serving leader of the party.
Firstly, what Breandán Ó hEithir once described as the “essential dull details of how the bottom rung of the ladder to power is hammered into place”. A much smaller FF party still prizes the idea of its fingers on the pulse of grassroots sentiment. Secondly, the danger of becoming cocooned. In his first speech as leader of FF, Martin made much of being in touch: “My family’s values were those of republican nationalism and community involvement. My father worked as a bus driver, helped found their union and was active in many local groups.” He also, during that speech, paid homage to the FF heritage: “Fianna Fáil has always been bigger than its leaders. The organisation is made up of ordinary people who work in their communities and take nothing from politics except a sense of making a contribution.”
Where lie such contentions after 14 years as leader? Perhaps inevitably, his longevity has opened fault lines that the Jim Gavin debacle have widened. In 1990, Lenihan’s defeat was not an immediate trigger for the downfall of Haughey, but as the late political commentator Noel Whelan put it, it did mean “Fianna Fáil was now openly talking about the post-Haughey era”. That era started 16 months after Lenihan’s defeat.
