At 5am on the morning of September 3rd, 1967, Sweden switched from driving on the left to driving on the right. Högertrafikomläggningen, or, to put it rather less impenetrably, Dagen H.
Up to then, Sweden was alone among its neighbours in continuing to drive on the left. Volvo had even started making cars with the steering wheel on the left to accommodate the much bigger markets outside Sweden, which meant that a growing proportion of Swedes were driving cars built the wrong way around for their own road network.
As the number of car crashes continued to rise, the Swedish government began to think, not unreasonably, this might have been a factor. And so they embarked on a two-year plan to educate the public, modernising public transport and moving signs, stops and traffic lights. There was even a song contest as part of the education project, with the track Håll dej till Höger, Svensson (Keep to the right, Svensson) getting to number five in the Swedish charts.
A total of 360,000 signs needed to be changed, the vast majority of them on the day before. But in the final analysis, they had to pick a time, and a date. There was a countdown on national radio, and then that was it. Swedes used to drive on one side of the road. And then they didn’t. There were fewer crashes than average during the following Monday morning’s commute.
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Now this column might just be seen as an extended invitation to you all to go and track down Keep to the Right, Svensson online (it’s a banger, I need hardly tell you), but the point is this. Planning for a change is hard. It pays to do your work. But when change is inevitable, when you’ve made the decision to do something, it is usually as well to just go ahead and do it. Sometimes the only way to learn is to do.
The GAA, the LGFA and the Camogie Association are going to integrate. They have decided to do that because we all agreed quite a long time ago that having a daughter or having a son should not, and in actuality does not, impact on your child’s ability to access Gaelic games. This merger is a simple statement of the reality of what’s on the ground.
We decided a number of years ago that club hurling referees couldn’t handle making a decision on a black-card penalty, a discrepancy between the club game and intercounty which remains. Soon after, Jim Gavin stood in front of club referees and asked them to deal with 49 new rules – enhancements – to Gaelic football. The sky did not fall in. They dealt with it. The Overton window on what is an acceptable rate of change in the GAA has moved.
The level of agonising over this issue has reached critical proportions. There has hardly been an article written on the issue of integration over the course of the last three years that has not included some doom-laden comment from the then Leinster chairman, now president-elect of the GAA, Derek Kent.
Our incoming president has suggested 2034, the 150th anniversary of the founding of the GAA, would be a more fitting end date for integration. Another way of looking at it would be to say, hmm ... 150 seems like a pretty big number. As Senator Evanne Ní Chuilinn said to me last week, do we really want to put it on the record that it took us a full century and a half to give women equal status in the organisation?
That is not to say the process has not been bungled to this date. The level of communication from the steering group has been minimal, and that goes for communication to the general public as much as it does for county boards. It is also fair to say that there is a degree of ideological opposition to the idea of integration in the GAA. There are people who quite frankly don’t like the sound of it. Their presence can be acknowledged. Their input should be ignored.
But there is a broader constituency that needs to be brought along that is still entirely within the capabilities of the steering group. If you’re hosting roadshows, try not to host them on weeknight evenings in traffic black spots. Focus on finances, fixtures and facilities, and walk the public through the issues. Twenty months is still plenty of time.
Using the Football Review Committee (FRC) as an exemplar is not something just limited to the GAA any more. It is now shorthand more generally for no-nonsense leadership, in the same way that “putting Michael O’Leary in charge of the country” was briefly a galaxy-brained thing to be a heard saying in any context. The sooner that trope dies a death the better, but the GAA have it as a blueprint. Bore us into submission with constant updates, if you must. Anything is better than the silence that has marked most of this process.
I absolutely appreciate the level of work required. This is not to minimise the problems. But there’s no easy way to change what side of the road you drive on. The number of deaths and injuries on Swedish roads in 1967 actually came down from the totals in 1965, the year in which the switch was first suggested. People can adapt a little quicker than you think. You just have to say you’re doing it, and do it.
