An Irishman’s Diary on Noël Browne’s radical vision

'Passionate Outsider" was the subtitle of John Horgan's 2009 biography of Noël Browne (the centenary of whose birth occurs on December 20th) and the phrase sums up well the life of one of Ireland's greatest – and most controversial – politicians of the 20th century. Although the perennial outsider, he was a member of no fewer than five political parties (two of which he co-founded) and the title of his 1986 memoir, Against the Tide, indicates that the policies which he fought to implement provoked fierce opposition.

He grew up in Waterford, Derry, Athlone and Ballinrobe, one of eight siblings of a father who was an inspector with the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children. Partly because of this work, the family became infected with TB and his father died from the disease when Noël was just nine. A few years later, his mother brought him and his siblings to England to stay with her eldest child when she knew she was dying from TB; she died in a workhouse two weeks after arriving in England. A number of Browne’s siblings also succumbed to the disease.

He went to St Anthony’s Preparatory School in Eastbourne on a scholarship in 1929 and from there progressed to the prestigious Jesuit Beaumont College, Windsor, where he met Neville Chance, the son of a wealthy Catholic Dublin medical family. The family supported Browne through medical school in Trinity College Dublin. In 1940, he suffered a severe recurrence of TB and was treated in a sanatorium in Sussex, paid for by the Chance family. He recovered, graduated as a doctor and worked in various TB sanatoriums in Britain and Ireland.

He came to believe that only through politics could something significant be done to tackle this disease that was destroying so many lives. He joined the new Clann na Poblachta party that had been set up by Seán MacBride, partly because of its commitment to tackle TB, and won a seat in Dublin South-East at the 1948 general election. Appointed minister for health in the State’s first Inter-Party government, he set about implementing the 1947 Health Act introduced by the previous Fianna Fáil government.

His reforms coincided with the first widespread use of the anti-TB vaccine, BCG, and the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin.

He introduced free screening for TB sufferers and launched a programme to build new hospitals and sanatoriums, innovatively funding the construction by means of the Department of Health-controlled Irish Hospitals Sweepstake (an early form of State lottery).

However, when he tried to implement the Mother and Child provisions of the Health Act (which proposed to provide free State-funded healthcare for mothers and children under 16 without a means-test), he fell foul of the Irish Medical Association (IMA), of the Catholic Church and eventually of his government colleagues. The details of the controversy that followed cannot be gone into here (and have been well covered elsewhere) but it led to Browne’s resignation and hastened the collapse of the coalition. No doubt there were faults on all sides, and to this generation the subservience of politicians to Catholic Church figures at the time is incomprehensible (and inexcusable) but the opposition of the IMA may have been more significant, and a more conciliatory approach from Browne might have led to a different outcome.

He was re-elected as an Independent in 1952, joined Fianna Fáil the following year, lost his seat in 1954, and was returned again in 1957 as an Independent, having been expelled from Fianna Fáil. He founded the National Progressive Democrats with Jack McQuillan in 1958, was returned at the 1961 general election and he and McQuillan joined Labour in 1963. He lost his seat in 1965 but was returned for Labour in 1969. Opposition to coalition with Fine Gael meant he didn’t run for Labour in 1973 but he represented Trinity in Seanad Éireann until 1977, when he was re-elected to the Dáil as an Independent. He co-founded the Socialist Labour Party but retired from politics in 1982.

Perhaps Groucho Marx’s quip about refusing to join any club that would have him as a member might apply to Browne’s party-hopping, but that would be unjust to the principled stand he took on so many issues. Was he a convinced liberal fighting conservative, reactionary forces or a difficult maverick who found it impossible to make the compromises politics sometimes demands? The truth probably lies somewhere in between, but he overcame extremely difficult background and health issues to make a major contribution to Irish public life.