Authors: Noël Browne
In spite of the opposition of the bishops, many members of the Catholic clergy warmly welcomed the main proposals of the scheme. Bishop Dignan, of the National Health Insurance Board, had
expressed his disgust with the ‘pauper’ nature of the dispensary service. Indeed the then Minister for Health, Mr MacEntee, had sacked him for his outspokenness in protesting against
the quality of poor law medicine. A parish priest friend of mine confided miserably to me, ‘It is people like myself who will have to spend the rest of our lives apologising for the behaviour
of the hierarchy in destroying a good health scheme, and bringing down a government’.
With Mr MacBride finally deserting to Fine Gael, the doctors and the hierarchy, I was isolated in Cabinet; the bishops could now safely call for my final submission. It was made clear to me that
the phrase used by both the Taoiseach and Mr MacBride, ‘I must satisfy the Bishops’, brooked no compromise. Their demand was for unconditional surrender on the bishops’ terms. I
was equally adamant in my determination not to concede the no-means-test principle.
It is important to recall that as this complex crisis developed, an increasingly acrimonious debate between the medical profession and the Department of Health was also in progress. In the
beginning memoranda were conciliatory on both sides, but fortified by the knowledge that my Cabinet colleagues had lost their nerve and their enthusiasm for the scheme, the consultants became
intransigent. Yet another factor was the continuing disruptive effect of the increasingly angry Hartnett-MacBride quarrel within Clann na Poblachta.
Meanwhile it was imperative that I should maintain the pressure of work in the Department of Health to complete the vast hospital and clinic building programmes. We had to continue with the
national plan to eliminate tuberculosis. There was also my role within our overall departmental programme designed to educate public opinion about the real issues involved. I instructed my personal
secretary to arrange that at regular intervals of about a fortnight, in different parts of the country, and on the radio, I should outline in detail the benefits of the proposed mother and child
health scheme. This I did on occasions such as the laying of foundation stones and similar non-political events. Our educational literature aimed at parents and children was distributed to all
suitable outlets, schools, post offices, hospitals or garda stations. It is a measure of how little was known in the Department of Health about the opposition of the hierarchy that quite
innocently, and to the intense annoyance certainly of Dr McQuaid, we had sent on 6 March copies of our literature on the mother and child health scheme to each member of the hierarchy. In the
circumstances our action was considered to be a deliberate provocation.
There were cleverly-illustrated half-page advertisements in the national and provincial newspapers, packed with information and, as with the booklets and leaflets, bilingual. A deluge of
education and information poured from the Department of Health in increasing intensity over a period of months. Systematically we set out to win wide support among the public for the scheme. I
recall Fidel Castro’s remark, shortly after he came to power in Cuba, ‘Everyone is against me but the public’. The coalition government to their cost failed to recognise this.
To off-set the effect of this public campaign the medical consultants issued statements saying that the absence of the money relationship between the doctor and the patient would cause a
deterioration in the quality of the health services. The magnificent success of the free fever and TB hospital schemes readily gave the lie to this.
A Jesuit priest, Fr Edward Coyne, wrote to the newspapers, complaining that if there were a free medical scheme ‘the standard of medical care for all would be reduced to that standard at
present available to the dispensary patient’. What an implicit condemnation of the dispensary services! He went on to criticise the mother and child scheme in the authoritative Jesuit
publication,
Studies
.
While I was having tea in the Dáil restaurant on the afternoon of 6 April 1951, a reply from the hierarchy to my memorandum on the October meeting at the Archbishop’s palace —
the terms of which had been finally and belatedly transmitted to them by Mr Costello on 27 March — was handed to me by my personal secretary Dick Whyte. It was breath-taking in its assumption
that the hierarchy of one religion could dictate to a sovereign government on matters of national policy. The letter went on, ‘The Hierarchy must regard the scheme proposed by the Minister
for Health as opposed to Catholic social teaching’. Just as my theologian had assured me, the reply from the hierarchy made no attempt to support the deliberately misleading claim made by
Archbishop McQuaid that the scheme was contrary to Catholic moral teaching.
I went straight across to the General Post Office, at that time the headquarters of Radio Eireann. It had been previously arranged that I should go on radio at peak listening time with a
detailed clarification of the health scheme and its full implications. The fact that an explanatory letter to the newspapers about the health scheme had already been suppressed by the Taoiseach was
an ominous indicator that our time was running out. If Costello had known of my intention to speak on the radio, he would have prevented me from doing so. Speaking in both Irish and English, my
purpose was to mobilise maximum public support for the health scheme in the coming struggle.
Shortly after the broadcast, I was not surprised to be called to an emergency Cabinet meeting later that evening. From the absence of ministerial papers in front of each minister, it was clear
that there was only one item for discussion, the letter from the hierarchy. All was tense, quiet and awkward. John Costello told us that the meeting had been called so that we could hear the latest
about the mother and child health scheme. Sitting down, Costello took up the letter. Clearly, for him, it was holy writ. No doubt he had already discussed his tactics with his Cabinet colleagues: I
had had no information or contact with MacBride about the subject. Slowly and solemnly Costello read out the Archbishop’s letter to us all.
He then looked at me and said, ‘This must mean the end of the mother and child scheme’. All heads around the table began to nod, like those strange toy Buddhas. They agreed, oh how
fervently they agreed, with the Archbishop and the Taoiseach. Costello appeared to expect their agreement and my equally enthusiastic nodding acceptance, followed by my agreement to withdraw and
amend the scheme. The new scheme must be in accordance with the demands of the hierarchy. I was unable to oblige; my response was to plead with them for patience. I pointed out that the letter from
the hierarchy had referred only to social teaching. Because of this, there was no reason why a conscientious Catholic could not carry on and implement the health scheme as had been agreed upon
between us in Cabinet. They would not transgress against their religion as they would do were the scheme contrary to Catholic
moral
teaching. I sought to explain the difference between
Catholic social and moral teaching, as earlier clarified to me by my theologian, but they were not interested. Fleetingly and irreverently I reflected that one Judas was bad enough but twelve of
them must be some kind of record, even in Ireland.
Grudgingly the Taoiseach allowed my request that I ask every one of the Cabinet the question ‘Do you accept?’ Boldly Mulcahy agreed, ‘He certainly deserves that right’.
First I asked the Labour leader Everett, then the patrician McGilligan. Difficult to believe, there was no difference between the landlord and the peasant. Then from Norton, prostrate obeisance.
Michael Keyes, a Labour minister who had succeeded T. J. Murphy, was the only one to demur meekly, ‘They shouldn’t be allowed to do this’. But he too nodded his head. Seán
MacEoin was outraged that I had even dared to question him. Angrily he blustered, ‘How dare you invite me to disobey my church?’ The hierarchy had spoken, in no uncertain terms. He
asked, ‘Who would oppose the positive teaching of those entitled to teach?’ Then he went on ingenuously, and with a welcome edge of blacksmith’s humour, ‘I don’t want
to get a belt of a crozier’. The lawyer, MacBride, was concerned with evidence, and no doubt with history. He begged the Taoiseach that his tortuous argumentation, already prepared in
writing, be included in the Cabinet papers. Contrary to precedent it was, and is there now for all to see in recently-released state papers. Re-reading it now, it would have been wiser for MacBride
to have left his documentation of unconditional surrender to a convenient wastepaper basket, and simply grunted his approval with the rest.
Later Costello was to say, ‘As a Catholic, I obey my authorities’. MacBride was quoted as saying, ‘Those in the government who are Catholics are bound to accept the views of
their church’. Mr. Costello shrugged off any claim he might have had to being Taoiseach in a sovereign government by the letter he sent to the Archbishop saying that the government would
readily and immediately acquiesce in a decision of the hierarchy.
I made a remark about considering my future action and left the Cabinet room. Two days later I was summoned to a meeting of the executive of Clann na Poblachta, called by Seán MacBride.
All that I had done as Minister for Health had been implemented under authority vested in me. My conscience was clear. I was now to be put in the pillory on a series of grave charges; my actions as
Minister and party member were to be subject to systematic distortion. Throughout that afternoon, into the night and until dawn the following morning, my good faith, motives, administrative ability
and political judgement were to be ridiculed and belittled.
From all over Ireland my party comrades filed into the room, most of them unaware of what lay ahead. With few exceptions, they expressed good will and their appreciation of the work we had done.
There were altogether about forty members in that executive. Anxious to wound and destroy, with the black eyes in his gaunt face suddenly hard and unfeeling, Seán MacBride set out to
demolish my respected position in the party. He recited a series of charges that were all directed to one end, first to discredit and then to eliminate me.
The charges dealt with all aspects of my political life. But no matter how forceful the advocate, and no one has ever questioned MacBride’s singular forensic skills, even this group of
ex-IRA sympathisers needed some kind of proof, if only to contradict the clear evidence of their own eyes. All over Ireland, new hospitals, clinics and sanatoria were being built. Nor could they
overlook the fine new health services provided by us during our three brief years. To manufacture this ‘proof’, MacBride resorted to a series of devious lawyers’ tricks. Showing
no shame at the breach of trust implicit in the action, he produced what he claimed to be a verbatim account of what I had said to him during the course of a private dinner to which he had invited
me at the Russell Hotel the previous November. Though for the most part the account was untrue, it was cleverly seeded with truths that I could not deny, such as my calm demeanour and my ready
admission that I had at one time described Norton as ‘a fake Labour leader’. He went on to compound this breach of trust by reading from a document within which he claimed was recorded
a detailed dossier of my movements, day and night, in the weeks prior to this executive meeting. Clearly he must have arranged to have had me shadowed by a member of the Special Branch or some such
accomplice; the shoddiness of such a breach of behaviour between two party and Cabinet colleagues seemingly had not occurred to him.
In line with the anti-Communist McCarthyite smear tactics common then, he set out to ‘prove’ either that I was a Communist, or had Communist sympathies; that I had vilified fellow
party members; that I had challenged his leadership; and that I had deliberately sought a fight with the Catholic church. All these were politically lethal charges. It was the function of his
specially-briefed claque of republican supporters to volunteer false verification of the many charges made against me by MacBride. It was clear from early on that the only possible verdict had
already been arranged beforehand — I was to be proven guilty.
Having defected on the mother and child issue, I had anticipated that MacBride must now fight to exculpate himself. But the cold venom of his verbal assault on me still came as a shock. With the
exception of the unexpected meeting some days earlier, our relationship had at all times been pleasantly uncontentious and even amicable. His near-schizoid transformation from friendliness to cold
hostility was truly daunting to experience, especially since I knew myself to be innocent of the many vile charges in his assault. Suddenly my friend and Cabinet colleague, the leader of our party,
had become my prosecutor. For the first time I was to confront that other disturbing MacBride of MacEntee’s fearsome indictment made during the course of the general election campaign in
1948.
Shocked by the revelation that MacBride had had me followed by Special Branch or other investigators, Jack McQuillan asked: ‘For how long have you had Dr Noël Browne followed? On how
many of us have you got similar dossiers?’ The Kafkaesque-like trial process, were I not the victim of it, was distractingly fascinating. Its tortuous complexity reflected the paranoia,
tormented reasonings and unwarranted fears of its begetter. Each time I denied a charge there was an immediate refutation of my denial by a false witness who claimed to have heard and seen
everything.
To substantiate his accusation about my alleged Communist sympathies, MacBride read out from his ‘Special Branch’ file a list of the meetings I was said to have had with young Jim
Larkin and Owen Sheehy Skeffington. It is true that Larkin had stood for election as a Communist on his return from Moscow. He had been utterly defeated. Having ‘learnt his lesson’, he
had long since become a respected trade union leader and deeply conservative member of the Labour Party. My good friend John Byrne, a socialist in the Labour Party, had been told by Larkin,
‘If it’s socialism you want, join some other party’. The truth was that I had met Larkin only once, when he had been part of a big trade union delegation which had unsuccessfully
attempted to mediate in the mother and child row. Owen Sheehy Skeffington was in fact a most vehement anti-Stalinist, like his martyred father before him, and the epitome of a greatly respected
liberal Irish socialist. Indeed, it was for this reason that the Labour Party had expelled him.