Authors: Noël Browne
Jim Everett, the second Labour leader in the coalition government, was safely tucked away in the peaceful Department of Posts and Telegraphs, which was normally reserved either
for nonentities or for potential trouble-makers. Everett was one of those whom our political commentators knowingly describe as a ‘shrewd’ politician. In pursuit of his own
self-interest he was, overnight, to launch us on a substantial national wage agreement. It was Everett who was to introduce a new word into our political folklore of jobbery which, in its own small
way, had echoes of Tammany Hall. The word was ‘Baltinglass.’
As with Norton, Everett was a ‘Bishop’s man’ on the health issue. He had already succeeded in splitting the Irish Labour Party; he led an anti-Communist breakaway called the
National Labour Party. His handful of seats qualified him to become a member of the coalition cabinet jigsaw. One other National Labour deputy, a well-known footballer with little else to offer,
was given a parliamentary secretaryship; his name was Spring.
Jim Everett was a nondescript, undersized man, of swarthy complexion, with watchful ferret’s brown eyes. On a visit to Wicklow town, where he lived, I have a fleeting memory of him sitting
beside his driver in the front of his ostentatious American state car. He affected a broadbrimmed, Jim Larkin-style, grey trilby hat whose edge seemed to tip his long nose as he looked down to
study his notes on his lap. Everett sat in his car as it swept down into the dark steep narrow laneway to the harbour, a fixed menacing figure, evoking visions of gunmen, speak-easies and Chicago.
But he was simply doing his vote-catching rounds, on his way to an old age pensioner or a widow with six children or simply another job to fix.
Everett was an active member of Wicklow County Council. His sole interest in life was to remain a Dáil deputy and a member of the county council, which he did until he died. Through no
fault of his own, as with so many others, he had had only a minimal education and a hard upbringing. Yet he was certainly to leave his mark on Irish public life. He attended Cabinet meetings
assiduously, taking no part in discussions except when an item came up concerning Wicklow in any shape or form. His contributions were then brief, to the point, invariably self-interested, and
usually acted on.
Having carefully ‘clocked’ into the Cabinet meetings on those days on which the county council sat in Wicklow, Everett would gather his largely unread sack full of briefs, mutter his
apologies, and slip away. He had little time for Cabinet meetings compared to the supreme importance of meetings of Wicklow County Council. For Jim Everett it was not in Government Buildings in
Merrion Street but in Wicklow town hall that the real business of the state was transacted. Yet being a minister had its uses. Early on in the course of a brief curt speech to the faithful in
Wicklow which the Cabinet was to read about for the first time in the morning papers next day, Everett awarded what was then a hefty pay rise to his departmental employees, the Post Office workers.
Inevitably this generous award became a mandatory pay rise for the whole of the public service. With minimal effort from Everett, overnight he had become the darling of the workers. The following
day in the Cabinet room he was mildly chastised by his colleagues, most of whom envied him his easily won nationwide popularity.
For a time, all went well. Meanwhile his civil servants were to notice that Everett had what, for them, was a disturbing practice of reading out every item of confidential supplementary
information in his parliamentary brief, meant only to be used ‘with discretion’ at question time. It was as if he was attempting to signal to his opposition questioner that he disowned
this kind of talk. ‘What could you expect from these civil servants?’
One evening, towards the end of our day in the Dáil, there came that cry ringing through the corridors of Leinster House that haunts the waking hours of any Cabinet minister, ‘The
government has been defeated.’ In spite of Fianna Fáil’s understandable disappointment at losing office, they had fought back doggedly and noisily in the House, drawing on all
their parliamentary experience and skill. This night they had mounted a cleverly-timed ambush; it was Everett who marched us all behind him into it. He introduced an increased postal charge against
which there had been a revolt by a number of coalition supporters who now, together with Fianna Fáil, brought down the government. It was a fine parliamentary achievement for Fianna
Fáil.
An emergency Cabinet meeting was called at once in the Taoiseach’s office in Leinster House. All of us were in differing states of shock at the unexpectedness of the defeat. We felt that
there was too much work still waiting to be done in our departments. None of us was anxious for a general election yet. One of the more experienced members of the Cabinet, probably Tom
O’Higgins, called in Dr Michael Hayes who was Professor of Irish at UCD and had been Ceann Comhairle at one time. He was at one time an active member of Cumann na nGaedheal, a man of
considerable political experience, and an authority on parliamentary procedure, well disposed towards the government. His advice was childishly simple, based on the notorious formula for survival
in Irish public life — ‘Those are my principles, and if you don’t like them, I’ll change them.’
Everett had no difficulty in following this advice. He returned to his department and reversed the postal increases. First thing the following morning Mr McGilligan submitted the estimate to the
Dáil. It passed without difficulty; we were not the only ones who did not want a general election just then. The disgruntled coalition deputies absent on the previous day had been whipped
into line.
All of us hoped that Everett, now out of trouble, would stay there. He did not. He had learned nothing. Early rumblings rolled towards us once again from Everett’s constituency in late
1950; it was a really sordid mess this time. It is hard to credit in a Labour minister but Everett had evicted a middle-aged postmistress from a post office in Co Wicklow and appointed a supporter
of his own in her place. The name of that Wicklow village, Baltinglass, has since entered into Irish political folklore; a book was even written about it. All this ensured immortality of a sordid
kind for Everett.
Throughout their sixteen years in office Fianna Fáil had had no scruples about behaving much as Everett had done, but all that was now irrelevant. They organised marches on the
Dáil; there were widespread protests with leaflets and public meetings held all over Co Wicklow, Telegraph poles were cut down. Not only Everett but the government as well were in real
trouble. Should they call on Everett to resign? It really didn’t matter; Everett had no intention of doing so. The behaviour of the Cabinet during this crisis was in sharp distinction to
their treatment of me over the mother and child scheme. (The Baltinglass situation was finally resolved in January 1951, when the postmistress got her job back).
It is probably a valuable yardstick of the standard of politicians who may form a Cabinet in the Republic that in spite of his inept and dubious behaviour when in office, Everett was again
chosen to serve as a Cabinet minister in a subsequent coalition Cabinet in 1954.
In a Cabinet room full of dull, earnest and dutiful plodders, Paddy McGilligan was an intriguing and polished anachronism. When he entered that room, always late, with five or six three-inch
thick briefs under his arm, we all had to curb an inclination to stand to attention; the ‘headmaster’ had arrived.
McGilligan impressed people with his sharp-edged Derry accent and the seemingly limitless range of his dialectical and intellectual skills. To Fine Gael he was the progenitor of the great
Shannon Scheme, a courageous idea at the time. For radicals such as myself he was the minister who in Cabinet had offered the widows of Ireland the bleak prospect that ‘when there were only
limited funds at the Government’s disposal, people might have to die in the country, and die of starvation.’ This speech was delivered at a time when a widow with five children had been
found dead of starvation. It was from just such an Ireland that so many of us had fled.
Only Everett separated me from McGilligan at the Cabinet table, yet after three years I knew little about him. He was a graceful, slight figure, with spindle-shaped arms and legs, a Lowry
matchstick man. The care with which he chose and matched his suits, shirts, ties, socks, shoes and cufflinks reflected what an elegant Elizabethan grandee he would have made. He had a small,
well-shaped angular head with carefully brushed grey hair; even the comb lines could still be seen. He had a broad forehead and a jutting nose and chin; smile lines radiated from his grey eyes and
around his mouth, which was strong and tight-lipped. He had all the darting, clearcut, precise movements of a cheeky eaglet, and graceful well-shaped prehensile claws for hands. Watch them unstrap
the curious traditional red and bronze tweed strap which is supplied to all ministers to tie up their briefs, carefully unpicking the fine needlelike teeth of the shining steel buckle. He could
undo the bow of the narrow pink ribbon used to contain an individual memorandum: no resort to the quick slice of a sharp penknife for him. Infinite patience, always in control, even over a tight
knot. Alone of all the members of the Cabinet, with the exception of Tim Murphy, I retained an obstinate respect for the panache, brilliance, and intellect of Paddy McGilligan. This did not prevent
my regretting his gross misuse of these talents.
McGilligan was a truly absorbing speaker in the Dáil. The Chamber rapidly filled when he took the floor. Unlike his carefully dark-suited front bench colleagues, he wore what appeared to
be a fine handwoven Donegal tweed jacket of faded brown, with fawn trousers, and suede shoes. When he stood up to speak, unlike the rest of us with our shambles of sheets of paper, McGilligan would
produce his single piece of paper, four inches by three in size, open it out and carefully smooth it over, using the knuckles of his closed fist on the desk in front of him. With that piece of
paper, or possibly one or two more for a speech of two or three hours, he could tease, torment, ridicule, and humiliate the unhappy opposition speakers, bringing out a protective fellow-feeling of
compassion among the rest of us.
McGilligan welcomed interruptions. It was his practice to stop completely in the middle of a speech and obligingly lean over towards his interrupter, his hand crooked behind his ear. He would
then invite the opposition speaker to repeat out loud, so that all of us could hear, whatever incautious criticism he wished to make. McGilligan would then take that phrase and, as with his tiny
piece of paper, spend up to half an hour scrutinising its grammar, its syntax, its plain facts. The overall effect was to make the interrupter plead for an end to it, and ensured silence for the
rest of his speech. He pilloried and ridiculed easily and fluently and at times hilariously, with pithy accuracy, wild wit, and venom. He enjoyed our enjoyment. For me his greatest performance was
when he spoke about a ‘megalomaniacal’ series of Fianna Fáil building proposals. It appears that these were designed to bulldoze most of Merrion Street, followed by Kildare
Street, a school, a convent, a hospital, part of the university, University College Church and much of St Stephen’s Green on all sides — or so it seemed, by the time McGilligan was
finished. The house had filled to listen to McGilligan. It was one of the few occasions on which I felt sorry for Seán Lemass. As far as I recollect, it was he who got the blame for the
proposals. I need not have worried since even Lemass smiled too in admiration at the virtuoso performance by a master. Strangely, it was said that McGilligan was not a successful lawyer in court
(his forte was Constitutional Law).
He was fortunate in having a striking-looking wife, bright, witty, and intelligent, who was temperamentally suited to him. They were lighthearted and carefree at External Affairs dinners, and
would descend as if from another world from whatever pre-dinner gathering was on, drawing to themselves the eyes of everyone in the room. She always dressed in an exotic model dress, unlike my own
wife, whose dress was stitched together at the last moment and, if there was time, ironed before leaving home; he wore a finely-cut tailcoat, with a white butterfly tie at his throat. The
McGilligans had come to enjoy themselves, and nothing would stop them. They loved life and clearly enjoyed one another’s company.
McGilligan’s attendance at Cabinet meetings was erratic. He rarely appeared until we had already completed an hour or two’s work. I believe that we all feared an inquisition by
McGilligan; I certainly did, but my finances were to a great extent under my personal control, because of the peculiar arrangements surrounding the spending of the Hospital Sweep Funds. My main
encounter with McGilligan concerned my appeal for money to do something to improve the appalling conditions in which many of our old people ended their days in our workhouses. In spite of his
reputation for meanness, he was sympathetic to my understandably special interest in these institutions.
I had had no idea of the truly shameful conditions under which aged people, orphans and the destitute were compelled to exist. As minister, touring the hospitals, mental institutions and
workhouses then called ‘county homes’ I saw for myself the Dickensian state of the buildings and the distress of their inmates.
Children in workhouses, like old-style criminals, carried numbers on their backs to distinguish one from another. Each destitute family was broken up — the father going this way, the
mother that way and the children, according to sex, yet a third and fourth way. In a workhouse which I visited in Longford, an open sewer ran through the recreation grounds. The food was cooked, as
it was in most of the workhouses, in a large vat which had a block and tackle to open and close the vast lids in the open air kitchens. Whatever was to be stewed for the inmates was poured into
these enormous stew pans. The wards were long, the walls had no pictures, the floors were bare and the sky was frequently visible through the broken slates on the roof. The beds were on raised
platforms to accommodate straw-filled paliasses, long lines of them on either side of the room, occupied by pale, mummylike human beings lying semi-comatose, apathetic and completely uninterested
in their surroundings.