Authors: Noël Browne
During the hunger strike carried out by the Provisional IRA in Northern jails in 1981, a number of young republicans starved themselves to death in the vain hope of achieving prisoner of war
status with civilian clothes. As a Dáil deputy I was called to support the campaign. I agreed to do so. There was but one condition: that the campaign for civilian clothes for prisoners be
extended to all prisoners in all our jails. As a socialist I believed that the majority of persons in our jails were products of broken homes, unemployment, illiteracy, poverty and hunger. The
reply from those in charge of the hunger campaign was that the Provisionals would not accept my socialist analysis of the origins of criminality.
Hundreds of these confused republicans over the years have killed or died most painfully in order to re-establish Rome rule all over Ireland. As late as the mid-sixties, I recall that the most
noisy protest of all made by young imprisoned republicans was because they were ‘not permitted to attend Mass on Sundays, when in prison’. They also complained that ‘their rosary
beads were taken away from them, on their arrest’. There must be few declaredly anti-imperialist republican revolutionaries anywhere else in the world who would protest at such arcane
grievances. To extend the ethos of our society to the North of Ireland would not be an extension of freedom. Yet committed left-wing Irish politicians have been divided on this, as was Connolly in
the early part of the century. This is one of the reasons why we have failed to build a strong left-wing movement in the Republic.
In 1958 Jack McQuillan came into possession of a number of shares in the
Irish Press
. He made one of these over to me, the only share I have ever owned, and this gave me the right to
inspect the books at head office. As I turned the pages of the great volume of listed shareholders and transfers, it became clear that de Valera had systematically over a period of years become a
majority shareholder of Irish Press newspapers. Although he was controlling director of the newspapers, the share prices were not quoted publicly. The price paid by the de Valera family to
shareholders was nominal. It was clear that de Valera was now a very wealthy newspaper tycoon. Recall the origins of the
Irish Press:
£1 shares were sold to Irish republicans, the
poorest section of the population, who bought them in the patriotic belief that their newspaper would be used to penetrate and destroy what Griffith called ‘the paper wall around
Ireland’. Of greater importance was their hope that through the
Press
newspapers enlightened education would help our people to understand and enjoy the benefits of a pluralist,
egalitarian republicanism.
McQuillan and I decided to raise the matter of our surprising discoveries in the Dáil. In spite of our nominally extensive rights under Standing Orders, no matter how we framed the
questions to the Taoiseach we were refused permission to table them. The Ceann Comhairle, Paddy Hogan, a Labour deputy from Co Clare, having no wish to antagonise de Valera supporters in the
constituency he shared with him, protected de Valera from embarrassing questions. Finally we were compelled to frame a motion for debate in the Dáil. This is a much slower process and had to
wait for over a year, but finally the debate took place. It is of interest to note that since that episode the three main parties have deprived private deputies of this valuable right to table a
motion on an important issue. Instead, at least seven signatories to the motion are needed.
The Dáil chamber was crowded for the debate. The opposition appeared to be surprised and shocked by the disclosures made by us about de Valera’s questionable behaviour in
accumulating majority share holdings of the newspapers in this way. We made the case that it must be onerous to the point of impossible for Mr de Valera to carry out his duties as Taoiseach and at
the same time be responsible for the day-to-day control of three national newspapers. Somewhat extravagantly, since we had a mere handful of shares, we claimed that there was a danger that if he
continued in these posts, either the newspapers or the country must be mis-managed.
A much more compelling argument concerned de Valera’s notorious ambivalence about the illegal use of force. The whole of the back page of the
Sunday Press
carried gruesome scarlet
colour cartoons illustrating the valorous deeds of republican violence during the Anglo-Irish and the civil wars. There were the bombed and burned-out buildings, the dead civilians, the dead
soldiers, the dead policemen bleeding in the gutters. Meanwhile the brave killers disappeared with smoking revolvers to their own greater glory and safe seats in Leinster House for life. De Valera
could not disown personal responsibility for these warlike pictures; under his carefully drafted articles of association, he was personally responsible for all editorial and administrative
policy.
We went on to claim that these cartoons and their contents constituted a direct glorification of war, and were an indirect incitement to murderous IRA killings and bombings in the North of
Ireland and Britain. An even more grotesque feature was that on the front pages of the same papers were lists of names of young ‘republicans’ interned without trial by de Valera in the
Curragh.
De Valera left the chamber soon after the start of the debate, leaving the case for the defence to be made by MacEntee. He later returned and, as reported in the Dáil records, put forward
a limp defence for his anomalous position.
Possibly the most significant event of that night’s debate was the behaviour of Fine Gael, in particular Richard Mulcahy. Ever since the bitter civil war split, nothing had united de
Valera and Mulcahy more consistently than their determination to resist the pernicious doctrine of radical French republicanism preached by McQuillan and myself; invariably and consistently they
united to vote down our radical proposals. Not so tonight, however.
Mulcahy and his followers could not ignore this shameful betrayal of shareholders’ trust by de Valera. For the first time, and no doubt hating it, Mulcahy and Fine Gael decided to join us
in the voting lobbies. It was a considerable triumph for us, especially since de Valera was heard to complain to Mulcahy, ‘I did not believe that you would do this to me’. The national
press, as is their wont, closed ranks behind their ‘leader’. The public, while they couldn’t crown him ‘King of Ireland’, instead sent him up to the Vice-Regal Lodge
as President in 1959. As far as McQuillan and I were concerned, he was out of harm’s way at last.
S
IDE by side with my political life, with all its uncertainties, I had to consider the question of my medical career. Tuberculosis
was no longer a disease of significance in the Republic, and those of us who worked in sanatoria necessarily became redundant. The inadequacy of our personal financial position now became both
frightening and precarious. Throughout the years during which I had worked in Ireland, it was correctly assumed by my employers that I was content to work for nothing in the care of those suffering
from pulmonary tuberculosis. On principle I would not take private patients. Yet although I had completed my postgraduate years of study in two famous English chest hospitals, both before and
following my period as Minister for Health I found it impossible to get work in tuberculosis in Ireland in any hospitals other than Newcastle, which was a small voluntary hospital.
It was now imperative that I commence to train in a new and different speciality. The Marine Port and General Dock Workers’ Union had offered to accept me as a general practitioner within
their trade union service. Once again, with regret, I declined, because neither Phyllis nor I believed that we should work within the ‘fee for service’ form of medical practice
inseparable from private medicine in Ireland.
It was clear that the only other form of medical practice for which there was a considerable state sector in Ireland providing for the non-paying poor patient was in psychiatric medicine. In my
late forties, I returned to university to begin life again as a student. Following over eight years of study and work in the most menial of medical posts I finally qualified with a Diploma of
Psychological Medicine and membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. Once again I was qualified to work in medicine, and was appointed as consultant psychiatrist to the Eastern Health Board
in 1972.
The years of training were to be particularly lean ones for myself and my family. The small lump sum of money given to us following the final closure of Newcastle Sanatorium was completely
absorbed in my own studies at university and the maintenance of my family.
On hearing about the impending closure of the sanatorium our bank manager foreclosed on a loan of £800 with which we had bought the
semi-derelict house in Bray in which we lived. With no money and no credit, and with all our furniture on the lorry of our kind neighbour Mr Costelloe, we limped off to occupy a condemned two-room
national school. It had neither running water nor sanitary facilities, and the roof was riddled with woodworm. Worse still, we did not have the £300 needed to pay the caretaker to whom the school had been given by its former owners. By some kindly sleight-of-hand our sympathetic solicitor made some loan arrangement with the owner,
who himself at one time had been under my care. With Phyllis, Ruth and Susan, I began to make a home in that derelict outhouse.
With moving and unselfish generosity, a number of craftsmen friends of ours from the Newcastle area combined to make the place habitable. Sitting around a fire of scrap garden timber, the
concrete blocks, baulks of timber and barrows of cement crisscrossed between us, we drank our tea in our primitive sitting-room. Windows, doors, gutters, slates, all bought by myself and carted
home, came from scrapyards around Dublin. Our half-glass front door had once opened into the ancient Apothecary’s Hall in Holles Street. The insignia was faintly etched on the glass, making
an elegant entrance to our new home.
I now began a long and searingly painful training in the tragic environment of our grim and cheerless mental hospitals. I attended lectures and courses, but needed in addition long periods of
residential hospital training at the level of house physician. This poorly-paid, much exploited and shamefully overworked job I had last left behind me nearly twenty-five years earlier. The
transition from Minister for Health to house physician was in itself a considerable shock for myself and my family.
Knowing that it was reputed to be the hospital with the highest standard of mental care for its patients, I first called on Dr Norman Moore at St Patrick’s. Dr Moore gave me to understand
that he had no work for me but would help me to get work in England, but I declined his offer. Work in an English mental hospital at that time was easily found, but we had no intention, if it could
be avoided at all, of being driven out of Ireland.
My medical colleagues of all denominations made it clear that no matter what my qualifications, they would not permit me to practice medicine in Ireland again at any level. I was even rejected
as unfit for one job whose only responsibility was to distinguish between the abnormal and normal chest X-ray picture, work at which I had spent all my medical life; instead a former student of
mine was appointed.
The ugly peculiarity about a boycott is the measure of moral cowardice which it induces. Individual value judgements are suspended. An uncritical consensus takes over. Without doubt there were
clerics, doctors, politicians and others who, though silently in sympathy, were too fearful of the boycott to protest openly against the injustice to myself or my family. There is no self-pity in
this assessment — I had well known what would be the consequences of my actions for myself. Phyllis and I had no regrets, except for our children, who were innocent of having inflicted hurt
on anyone. Ruth and Susan were refused admission to a number of schools, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. Ruth was told that because she lacked artistic talent, she must leave the National
College of Art. Within weeks of leaving, she had won first prize in the national Caltex competition, in which there were twenty-two thousand other competitors, and second prize in another.
During the period of greatest hostility to us, I sat waiting to have my hair cut in Prost’s hairdressers in Stephen’s Green. Nearby sat a well-known Dublin anaesthetist Dr Tom
Gilmartin, a friend of ours whom we had last met at a diplomatic cocktail party at the Italian Embassy while I was Minister for Health. There we had held the usual animated and friendly
conversation. On this occasion, however, he leaned furtively across to me, momentarily grasped me by the shoulder and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. Without uttering a word, he passed on to his
waiting chair. A kindly man, no doubt, he was sorry for me, but at the same time unwilling to be seen saying so.
Finally, as my last hope, I went to see the RMS at St Brendan’s Hospital. The last occasion on which I had visited Dr John Dunne had been in my capacity as Minister for Health. Dr Dunne
received me again with the same courtesy and anxiety to help. We were now two medical consultants meeting on equal terms, and he was puzzled at the reason for my visit. He was understandably
shocked to hear me ask for a job as one of his house physicians, but he quickly recovered his aplomb. A vacancy was available, and I got the job in January 1964. I hurried to tell Phyllis that we
had reason to hope again. Shortly afterwards I suffered my fifth relapse with tuberculosis, and once again was put out of action with no pay.
St Brendan’s may be all the fearful things which it is claimed to be at regular intervals in the national press. Yet there is another way of looking at it. For the aspirant consultant
psychiatrist in his late forties with little time or money, St Brendan’s is an encyclopedia of human distress in every possible form and point of development. A weekend duty there was a truly
educational yet wounding exposure to intense mass suffering. Of much interest to me too was the effect of that suffering on others, in particular the response of the so-called normal population to
that collective despair.