Authors: Noël Browne
As with Costello, Dillon shared my hopes for improving the health service. He had led the campaign against the authoritarian 1946 Fianna Fáil Health Bill and knew that improvements were
badly needed. Costello had been immediately intimidated by the opposition of the medical profession, as conveyed to him through his advisor on such matters, Dr Tom O’Higgins. To Costello, the
medical profession were the unselfish workers who gave their lives in the service of the poor. More of a sceptic, Dillon supported my stand against the resistance of the Medical Association to the
mother and child health proposals. Dillon went so far as to send a personal letter to me, in his bold one-inch high lettering: ‘I am 100% behind you, Noël.’ He went on to dismiss a
ballot of members by the IMA as a ‘most tendentious document.’ I was indeed grateful for what was my sole support at that time, but beneath all the outward trappings of education,
wealth and culture, and in spite of his commitment to stand with me against ‘the four corners of the earth’, as soon as the bishops called the tune Dillon obediently danced to it. He
argued long and passionately with me, and voted against the health scheme.
P
ROTEST meetings followed my resignation; the public was more shocked and indignant about the bishops’ interference in
parliament than were the politicians. The Dublin Trades Council expressed their disappointment at the loss of the health services. Letters of support flowed in from all over the country, with money
with which to fight the election. Within a few weeks, in fear of an inevitable defeat on a Department of Agriculture vote, the government was dissolved, and a general election followed on 30 May
1951. The public believed that the government had been weak and had treated me unfairly, so from all parties they rallied to my support. Yet this is not the stuff of political change. With the
exception of Jack McQuillan and Peadar Cowan, none of the working politicians dared support us. De Valera and Fianna Fáil were concerned only with regaining office. Fine Gael and Clann na
Poblachta, under Seán MacBride, were committed to defending their position. The rank and file of the Labour Party were drilled into line behind Norton and Everett on the side of the
consultants and the bishops and against a people’s health scheme. Among the Labour leadership at the time were Donal Nevin, Jim Larkin, Michael Mullen and Chris Ferguson.
So we faced into the general election. The formidable power of the Church was used unscrupulously against us. Noel Hartnett, my director of elections, was forced to threaten legal action against
priests whose sermons were particularly dishonest. Bishop Browne of Galway attributed my political beliefs to those of Nazi Germany. Our health scheme was wrongly portrayed as advocating euthanasia
for the unfit and the aged, as well as abortion and contraception. In
The Lantern
magazine the Dominican Order circulated a question-and-answer series which portrayed the scheme as being
immoral and a form of Communism, e.g. ‘Question: Is it a mortal sin to introduce a mother and child health service? Answer: It is a sin to introduce a mother and child no-means-test
service’. ‘Question: Is it true that the Communist Party believes in free health services? Answer: It is true that the Communist Party has a free health service’. There was a
direct attack on the credibility of departmental staff. We had published an English translation of a document in which the head of the pontifical academy of sciences, the Rev Professor Gammeli, had
written, ‘the British national health scheme was not immoral’. A priest at Westland Row accused us of having ‘cooked’ the Gammeli document to ‘suit our case’.
The suggestion was as outrageous as it was false; Aodh de Blacam had had the document authenticated at the Papal Nunciature. We had no difficulty in disposing of the lie, and my solicitors were
instructed to make the priest pay an agreed sum for defamation to the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose work I admired.
As to the media, we were supported by the then liberal
Irish Times
, which had a relatively small circulation. The mass circulation Independent Newspapers suppressed our side of the
story, and de Valera’s Irish Press Newspapers did the same. There was as yet no television service, and the state radio service favoured the consultants and the church. I was not asked to
give fully my side of the controversy, nor have I ever been since, even though I have had to listen to contrary views.
We decided that we should not directly confront the bishops during the campaign. We chose instead to confront the medical consultants. As a final precaution we decided that although
distinguished speakers were available to us there should be only two campaign speakers in Dublin South-East, myself and Noel Hartnett. In this way we retained control of our campaign.
We were happy with the final results. Standing as an independent, I nearly doubled my first preferences in Dublin South-East, just failing to oust John Costello from the head of the poll. The
first preferences were: John A. Costello (Fine Gael), 9,222; Noël Browne (Independent), 8,473; Seán MacEntee (Fianna Fáil), 8,334; J. H. Douglas (Fine Gael), 710; P. McCarten
(Clann na Poblachta), 569; Michael B. Yeats (Fianna Fáil), 2,034. Michael ffrench O’Carroll, a young and politically inexperienced doctor, humiliated Seán MacBride, who scraped
home by only a few first preference votes. Jack McQuillan was returned in Roscommon, a remarkable personal triumph for a deputy in rural Ireland. Peadar Cowan, another critic of the church’s
actions, was easily returned in Dublin.
Only two Clann na Poblachta deputies were returned compared with ten deputies in 1948. The total Clann vote dropped from 274,000 to a mere 54,260. With 69 seats to Fine Gael’s 40,
Labour’s 16 and the Clann’s 2, Fianna Fáil were in a position to form a government.
Even under less than ideal conditions the voting process had shown itself capable of reacting sensitively to the behaviour of its elected representatives.
We were now faced with a new pattern of politics in Ireland, the multi-party or coalition concept of government. Henceforward, the Republic was to lose stability of the kind produced by the
repeated election and re-election of a Fianna Fáil government. This stability had had its advantages, but these were outweighed by a succession of increasingly inept Fianna Fáil
administrations.
Unhappily the introduction of the new coalition factor did nothing to improve the quality of government. Because of the dominance of a deeply reactionary educational system, backed by a rigid
censorship of ideas imposed on the adolescent and adult population, public life proved itself incapable of rising above the conformity of a conservative consensus. Emigration dealt efficiently with
both the intellectual dissident and the dissatisfied unemployed. The evolution of a serious radical, liberal or left-wing political movement became impossible. The Communist party, though
minuscule, was continually harassed. Little or no serious dissent was tolerated; there was no serious debate on ideological issues. The débâcle of the mother and child scheme had not
permanently disturbed the electorate; the out-going government was only narrowly defeated.
It was my misfortune to find that my vote was to be the determining one in the formation of the next government. In spite of the superficial attractions of playing kingmaker, an individual
deputy placed in this position can rarely survive the experience. In helping to deprive one group of politicians of the power and privilege of becoming the government, the deputy immediately
antagonises up to half the membership of the Dáil, which in turn represents about half of the electorate. Any benefits to the electorate from policy decisions taken by the new government
inevitably redound to that government because of its superior public relations facilities. The independent deputy is forgotten, unless the government carries through unpopular decisions; then all
attention is turned on the voting behaviour of the unfortunate deputy. He is blamed for keeping an inept government in power when it would have been ‘so easy’ for him to vote against
its policies. On finally deciding to vote against the new government which up to then he has consistently supported, he antagonises the other half of the Dáil, together with their supporters
in the electorate. He must then himself go to the country with precious little electoral support.
To precipitate a general election is a particularly hazardous decision to take. He must assume this power with considerable trepidation, and his justification for this action must be clearly
seen and understood by the electorate. What hope has he of achieving this objective when virtually all his political colleagues are, or have at some stage been, antagonistic to him, and he has lost
the support of both halves of the electorate? I had become bitterly disillusioned with the social policies of the coalition; I could not justify supporting them once again and restoring them to
power. Although no pre-election agreement was made, in a conversation with Seán Lemass I was given to believe that Fianna Fáil would try to give the people a worthwhile health scheme.
Brian Walsh, my legal friend, was very close to Lemass, and through him we had a secret meeting in a car outside the Harcourt Street laundry. Lemass was very honest with me; he said
‘there’s no bargain, no deal, but we’ll try to give you a good health service’. Since health was the subject with which I had become most clearly associated, and in which I
was most interested, I decided to support Fianna Fáil, with de Valera as Taoiseach. On hearing of my decision Brendan Gorish, the young Labour leader-to-be, hoping and believing that this
would be the end of my political career, commented, ‘At last we’ve got him in the net’.
Since Fianna Fáil had enacted the valuable 1947 Health Act, with its unique mother and child health service proposals, I felt they would be determined to insist on its implementation. De
Valera had the added advantage that he had a single united party behind him, under a notably rigid discipline. He did not have the disadvantage of Mr Costello’s coalition of five differing
points of view with which to cope. Nevertheless it proved to be a matter of ‘Hobson’s choice’, and I was to suffer for it politically. But there was no practical alternative.
My misfortune was that this particular Fianna Fáil government, dominated by MacEntee’s conservative economic policies, was one of the worst the Republic has ever known. As if in
retribution for the defeat of his idolised hero, de Valera, in 1948, one of MacEntee’s first acts as Minister for Finance in 1951 was to turn on the working-class sector of the population and
abolish food subsidies. As I had during the coalition government, I again chose to ignore those policies disagreeable to me in order to concentrate on the issue of the health services, but in my
speech supporting Fianna Fáil I pleaded that the unions should use their influence to redress the balance of the lost food subsidies during their wage negotiations.
Because the state papers of 1951 to 1954 have recently been made available, we now know the precise stance taken by de Valera and Fianna Fáil when faced with hierarchical opposition to
their new mother and child health service. The case made by the bishops against Fianna Fáil was the same as that made against the coalition government. There is no doubt that the general
belief fostered by historians that de Valera sturdily resisted the pressure of the episcopal committee on health matters is not true. Contrary to common mythology, his attitude and policy in
response to the hierarchy was one of unquestioning, unconditional surrender on every point and every demand.
Within the whole spectrum of Irish public life, Eamon de Valera’s position was unique. He enjoyed the support of a united and loyal party. He was the only Irish politician whose national
and international prestige and standing could have survived a confrontation with the bishops. He failed to rise to the occasion. Far from being the highminded statesman which he was believed to be,
under pressure de Valera showed himself to be a commonplace politician intent on retaining Cabinet office in the Republic. He was no more or less of a statesman than his coalition predecessors.
It has been de Valera’s main contribution to Irish society that he devised our unique form of conservative, sectarian Irish republicanism, It bears even less resemblance to Tone’s
liberal, secular, French republicanism than does the American Republican Party; the US is at least secular and pluralist.
Eamon de Valera had all the credentials. He had been to jail and condemned to death, but had managed to save his life when it was found that he was a Spanish American. Thereafter he became the
quintessential doctrinaire Irish nationalist, as has been the way with so many foreigners in Ireland. He had opposed the Treaty not because it was a compromise, but because ‘it was not
his
compromise’. Marked emotionally by the early loss of both his parents, de Valera had an unconscious contempt for the opinions of others. Significantly he later admitted that he
had ‘cried all the way across to Ireland from America’ as a child. There is little doubt that this early suffering marked him for life.
Of those members of de Valera’s cabinet involved in the new negotiations, the sole member who demurred to any extent from playing puppet was the Tánaiste, Seán Lemass.
The story of the controversy between the bishops and Fianna Fáil over the health scheme went back to the 1947 Health Act. This Act had been fully and openly debated in the Dáil
before becoming law. A letter was sent privately to Mr de Valera, on 17 October 1947, in which the bishops condemned the health scheme, claiming that it was ‘an invasion of parental rights to
pay for his own and his children’s health services’. In addition, they claimed, ‘there was interference in the rights of voluntary institutions, and in the medical
profession’. They also accused the state of wrongly taking powers ‘to educate mothers in respect of motherhood’. De Valera did not reply to this letter until 16 February 1948, two
days before the dissolution of his own government. He pleaded with the bishops that he was unable to deal with the matter, since the law in question was
sub judice
as to its
constitutionality. However, on receipt of the letter in October, he had written immediately to Dr Ryan, who was to become Minister for Health. This correspondence was not later made available to
me. De Valera enclosed the letter which he had received from the hierarchy, and included the crucially important words, ‘You will note that their Lordships consider that certain fundamental
rights are threatened by the provisions to which they refer. Will you please look into this, and if it should appear that fundamental rights are endangered by any provision of the Act, take the
necessary steps to ensure that, in its administration, this should be kept constantly in mind, and the rights in question respected. I should be glad to have your comments’. The letter from
the hierarchy, and the accompanying memorandum, were read at a government meeting. There is very little of de Valera’s sturdy ‘Republican independence’ discernible in that
memorandum; in it he laid down a policy of submission to the hierarchy. By reading the correspondence to his Cabinet, he notified his colleagues of the decision which he had already taken. There is
no record of any member of the Cabinet dissenting from this.