ALBERT REYNOLDS'S experience at the High Court in London last week derives part, I believe, from his inability to understand the cultural forces which had come to bear on his public life.
Something like this has probably been on the cards since the Arms Trial, following which Charles Haughey walked free from the High Court in Dublin, leaving the forces of compulsory modernisation at a loss for a sacrificial victim. The "modern" era in Irish politics began at that moment. Not only was the Civil War division reconstituted with a new set of legends, myths and memories but a new split was created, dividing Fianna Fail into greens and blues, a division which eventually yielded the PDs.
Charles Haughey inherited the mantle of moral leadership of whatever it was that constituted republicanism in the Republic. It took almost a decade for Haughey to fight his way back from the margins, and almost another to get a decent run at the top job, meeting quite extraordinary opposition on the way and enduring often unspeakable abuse in watchful silence. Other parties obviated the need to stand for anything by the simple expedient of presenting themselves as the alternative to Charles Haughey.
This facile political culture was buttressed by a journalism staggering in its lack of objectivity. The number of political commentators during those years who did not write as though they believed Mr Haughey was the Devil could be counted on the fingers of one hand.
The venom in the criticism of Charles Haughey was really directed at his supporters, who were seen by the Compulsory Modernisation Tendency (CMT) as representing backwardness, atavism, stupidity and sentimentality. We witnessed a sustained attempt to disinherit the rank and file supporters of Fianna Fail, perceived by the CMT as inappropriate denizens of the New Ireland. As if understanding he was attracting the odium of a culture which had failed to nail its demons, Mr Haughey rarely retaliated.
This was the context of Albert Reynolds's ascent to power. The reaction of the CMT to this event was a mixture of unrestrained prejudice and deep satisfaction. On the one hand, they were delighted the new leader provided an even more appropriate target for their bile, and on the other were motivated to plumb even greater depths of that bile by virtue of Mr Reynolds's additional handicaps (in their terms) in (a) coming from the country, (b) not having been to university, and (c) having had alleged associations with country and western music.
THE SCENE was set for a right old dingdong until Albert showed he was a bit trigger happy in the litigation department. Reynolds decided that, to carry out his work as Taoiseach, he needed to do something about the prejudice infesting the Irish media. Although journalists protest their innocence, a 10 year old child could see that in the Irish media different standards are applied to Fianna Fail than to other parties. No Fine Gael or Labour Party leader was, or is, subject to the same critical scrutiny as is applied to Fianna Fail leaders.
Where Albert Reynolds went astray was in not realising that what was under attack was the culture and membership of his party and not him personally, and in failing to see that this was a war he could not win.
It is ironic that it should end in an English court. But given the deep seated nature of the prejudices in question, the underlying issues were unlikely to receive unmediated ventilation in the home territory. When all this began, back in 1970, the CMT represented but a small proportion of the Irish population.
Today, through virtual monopoly of the media, and the wholesale abuse of language, truth and, natural justice, the pathological anti Fianna Failers have bludgeoned their way to virtual control of the society.
Any jury of Mr Reynolds's peers here would be likely to include at least a half dozen people willing to believe virtually anything written about, him.
I suspect Mr Reynolds thought he had a good chance of exposing at least the essentials of the truth before an English jury. For surely an objective collection of disinterested people could see through the kind of crude prejudice which the Sunday Times article contained?
And, politically at least, Albert Reynolds can claim to have been vindicated. The jury found he had not misled the Dail, the implication being that there was no basis for the Labour Party's withdrawal from government in 1994. Of course, any fair minded and objective observer knew that already.
If fairness rules in the long term, the history books will say that the collapse of that government was the result of a cultural orchestration involving the Opposition, the Labour Party and members of the media, and that the greatest scandal of these years was not to do with beef or inefficiency but the willingness of those conspirators to risk the fragile peace in the North to pursue their vendetta against Albert Reynolds.
NO ENGLISH jury could have begun to understand the complex cultural back ground to Mr Reynolds's complaint. And yet, despite this handicap, the jury was probably correct in finding that the disputed article was defamatory without being malicious. The Sunday Times printed what a lot of people in Ireland had allowed themselves to be persuaded to believe, the crude, partisan prejudice which could be picked up in Dublin for the price of a beer.
"Gombeen man" and "Mr Fixit" were among the least hurtful things said about Mr Reynolds by those in Ireland who had determined to remove Fianna Fail from the political stage. The English readers of the Sunday Times were told also of Mr Reynolds's supposed "social gaucheness" and the alleged fact that he was the latest in a long line of Fianna Fail leaders who walked "a very thin line".
They were informed that Mr Reynolds's demise had been welcomed "with a whoop of delight by the many Irish people who want to drag their country out of its past". They were told that Mr Dick Spring, on the other hand, was "Mr Clean", whose Ireland was "a more tolerant place". This is familiar stuff, the analysis one could hear at that time in any public house in Dublin 2, 4 or 6, and the line pursued for years by 95 per cent of the Irish media.
Indeed, such mentions of Mr Reynolds in Irish newspapers represented a substantial part of the Sunday Times defence. What the jury was not told was the extent to which such commentary was motivated by deep seated cultural prejudice against an entire political party and its supporters. How could they understand that the malice in this case was to be found not in the article complained of but in the culture reported upon?
It was a malice not just against Albert Reynolds, but against everything he stood for and everyone who stood with him. It is not at all surprising that the English jury just didn't get it.