Authors: Noël Browne
More and more, however, his sole preoccupation became his own political future. In the distinction which I make between those who ‘need politics for themselves’, and ‘those who
enter politics for others’, David needed politics and his obsession with his neurotic needs precluded concern for anyone who might, in his pursuit of these needs, get hurt. In time I came to
appreciate his inability to control his blacker side, and the driving compulsion of his pursuit of power.
Thornley was annoyed when the NPD submitted Noel Hartnett instead of himself as a candidate in a Dublin by-election. Soon after Noel’s failure to win the seat David, with the help of
right-wing allies, made an abortive attempt to take over the party. Unsuccessful, he resigned, and publicly declared his disgust with our politics. In the process he did much damage to our new
small group.
Though we parted for a time following the NPD’s eventual collapse (both Jack McQuillan and I had held our seats in the 1961 general election won by Fianna Fáil) we were to meet once
again as members of the Labour Party.
Because of a further flare-up of my tuberculosis in 1964, in spite of many invitations to campaign throughout the country, I was compelled to discontinue both active politics, and my job as a
house physician at St. Brendan’s. The new young party could not be nurtured as it deserved, and slowly disintegrated. However, this was for me a fruitful period of political development. I
met with a group of like-minded radicals at least once a week in a Kildare Street basement. Prominent among them was John Byrne, a member of an old Donnycarney family, whose father had been a
driver for a coal merchant in the early years of the century. John had set out to become a self-educated, widely-read authority on socialist Marxist and Trotskyite literature. He had been deported
back to Ireland, while working on the left in Britain, because of his anti-war activities. We first met during the mother and child crisis; since then we have continued to remain close friends and
political associates.
We were visited on occasions by left-wing comrades from Britain; these meetings were of value for the interchange of ideas about Anglo-Irish left-wing politics. At the beginning of one such
meeting, which was to be addressed by one of our visiting speakers, an incident occurred that was to have serious results for me politically but showed at the same time a refreshing side of
liberal-minded Dublin people’s sense of justice.
This happened during the Kruschev-Kennedy confrontation over Fidel Castro. In what became known as the Bay of Pigs invasion, the United States threatened to abort Cuba’s socialist
revolution. In defence of Castro, Krushchev moved missiles to Cuba in October 1962. We now know that the world was closer to nuclear extermination that night than ever before or since. As our
meeting began that night, 23 October, we all shared a restless foreboding of impending danger. Worse still was our sense of helplessness before it John Byrne pleaded the futility of our sitting in
a basement discussing the future when there was a good chance there might be no tomorrow for any of us. He moved that we take to the streets in Dublin to try to create a public awareness about the
possible imminence of world catastrophe.
For an Irish politician in Dublin to protest in defence of a Marxist revolution, even thousands of miles away, was asking for trouble. As we walked up the steps from our basement headquarters, I
murmured to him ‘John, this is going to cost us Dublin South-East’. We marched up Kildare Street, around Stephen’s Green, down Grafton Street, along Nassau Street towards Merrion
Square and the US Embassy in Ballsbridge. It was our intention to protest formally, leaving a message to that effect at the embassy.
As we marched down Grafton Street calling out our message and asking for support, a few good-humoured young boys and girls from the cafés and ice-cream parlours decided to join us. The
rest ignored us or patronisingly smiled at our foolishness, remaining in their queues for whatever makebelieve dream world was to be presented to them on the cinema screens. We were eventually met
by a solid blue line of gardai. As a parliamentary representative in a peaceful protest march acting as its spokesman, I asked permission to protest formally at the embassy. Seconds later I was
violently hurled through the air, victim of some kind of street-fighting artistry favoured by a notorious policeman who specialised in brutality and was proud of it. This was followed by a general
assault on our small group. Slowly we were driven back towards Clare Street. Many of the gardai were patient and did not use brutal methods. Our resistance, was finally crushed, however, by the use
of savage alsatian dogs, which had arrived in a police van. The assault, the strange animal sounds, the snarls, excited barks and whimpers, were all so unexpected and unthinkable that it was hard
to know what was happening. There was the sudden realisation that a large and angry animal with sharp teeth was furiously tearing at your clothes, your body, your head, face, and arms. My first
reaction was one of incredulity. Fear was blotted out by emotions closer to despair and disgust. As in most Irish homes, we have always kept dogs. I experienced a sense of hurt revulsion that men
could pervert the age-old friendship of man and dog. Someone had trained these dogs to savage a fellow man instead of serve him, to deliberately pervert a generous instinct into a fearsome hurting
one.
By this time a crowd had gathered in Clare Street. While being mauled by the dogs, I tried to tell the public that the men setting these dogs on us were the men whom we as citizens paid to keep
the peace. Finally the press arrived, among them a photographer. He got a particularly spectacular picture of one alsatian jumping at my head, a record of the event which could not be controverted.
Some of the young men and women needed hospital treatment for their bites. I treated my own.
There were a number of sequels. There was a court case in which it was implied that it was we, the marchers, who had provoked the police dogs. There was even a suggestion of irritation that I
did not look frightened in the photograph, the implication being that I had enjoyed the whole revolting episode. Those who went to court were given no sympathy. But a worthwhile result was that the
police may no longer use alsatian dogs to disrupt protest marches. Credit for this must go to the distinguished short story writer, Frank O’Connor, one of the early republicans in the
Anglo-Irish struggle. He wrote to tell me of his sympathy because of the attack by the police dogs. While disclaiming any interest in the subject of the march, he went on to invite us to take part
in another march, to be led by him to establish without question any citizen’s right lawfully to march anywhere, without molestation by police dogs, in the city of Dublin. It was for such a
freedom that earlier, as a young man, he had risked his life.
It was a dramatic occasion. That march duly took place, silently and peacefully. Nothing was said; there were no partisan flags, no scrolls or banners, no political slogans. No note or letter
was handed in when finally we arrived at the American Embassy. The march completed, all of us, citizens of differing shades of political and religious beliefs and of all ages, departed our
different ways. It was comforting to see the citizens of Dublin validate of their own accord, in the streets of Dublin, that liberal thesis, ‘I don’t agree with what you say, but I will
defend your right to say it’.
Several years later a member of the gardai with whom I had become friendly told me of that incident as seen by him that night. He said that inside the American Embassy a number of embassy staff
were armed, and prepared to use arms against us. The gardai had been for
our
protection; it was essential that we be prevented from reaching the embassy.
For ourselves, the sad sequel was as we had feared. The McCarthyite smear that our march had been a gesture of pro-Communist solidarity was used ruthlessly in the 1965 general election. Our
protest march had indeed ‘cost us Dublin South-East’. I lost my seat to Fianna Fáil’s Seán Moore, although increasing my vote from 4,717 in 1961 to 5,348.
With the demise of the National Progressive Democrats in 1964, Jack McQuillan and I concluded that our contributions in the Dáil, while valuable, remained limited in their long-term
effect without the support of a political party. Inevitably and reluctantly we were driven to accept the need to work within the least objectionable of the three main parties. With equal reluctance
the Labour Party finally accepted us as working members in October 1963. Surprisingly, the conservative Jim Tully voted for my admission while, unsurprisingly, Brendan Corish fought against it.
All went well for a short few years. I was even elected vice-chairman of the party in 1967. Then, as the pact-making between Fine Gael and Labour intensified, we became effectively isolated and
silenced. It is possibly true that we had been mistaken in not appreciating quite how effective what was euphemistically called party discipline could be. Parliamentary questions were permitted
only with the authority of the shadow minister. The use of motions, and bills on the order paper, which had been so effective and valuable in elaborating radical policies by initiating debates in
the Dáil up to now, was forbidden. Frank Cluskey, the party whip, was an enthusiastic member of the inner cabal, determined to form yet another coalition with Fine Gael and so win
ministerial office. For this reason, none but those chosen speakers who preached harmless banalities unlikely to ruffle Fine Gael were tolerated as speakers in the Dáil, especially on
contentious issues. It was Cluskey’s practice to promise permission to speak on a subject, but at the end of a long list which appeared miraculously to elongate further just as soon as I
asked permission to speak. I began to wonder whether we had been deliberately permitted to join the Labour Party so that we could be silenced.
In the late sixties and early seventies, for the first time, there was talk of liberal, even socialist, thought in the Republic. Politics began to ease its way from the monosyllabic, catch-cry
rhetoric of anti-British republicanism to a more creative, mature political mould. Much of this may have resulted from marginal access to world opinion through international travel, the extension
of television through the country, and the access to technological education needed to accommodate the new multinationals now beginning their ritual transitory flit to the favourable tax
concessions of the gullible Republic’s Ministers for Commerce.
Back in the fifties, the nationwide enthusiasm for our cause during the mother and child election had been a truly memorable but fleeting experience. The exuberant spirit of youth in the 1969
general election now came as a new and encouraging element in Irish public life. What an opportunity was to be missed by the Labour Party to harness this into something lasting. By this time I
myself was more consciously radical politically than I had been in 1951. Young people poured into the election rooms in Margaret Gaj’s restaurant in Baggot Street, all anxious to fight the
Labour Party cause. The potential then for social and political change was considerable.
Whatever its origins, there had been an exciting resurgence of interest in Labour Party politics. From the national schools to the universities, debates on socialist ideas among the young were
common to an extent never before seen, or indeed, permitted, by the authorities. For the first time I was to hear Marx and Communism referred to and discussed by young students at Synge Street
School debating society. Socialist ideas began to compete with the limited rhetoric of republicanism. The new influx of well-known names into the Labour Party, supported by an improved
administrative machine, appeared to have relieved the traditionally conservative Brendan Corish of his normal dislike of socialist ideas. In the United States, Conor Cruise O’Brien had been
associated publicly and courageously with a number of radical issues, such as apartheid and the peace movement. This had given us hope that in turn he might, when the opportunity arose, help
similar causes in his own country.
In a well-publicised speech, we were surprised to hear Corish promise ‘Socialism in the Seventies’. Growing more daring, he went on to cause raised eyebrows by taking an oath
declaring that, under no circumstances, would he take part in any future Fine Gael coalition. Even more recklessly he promised that he would go into the backbenches, sooner than go into a
coalition. These were brave empty phrases, as time would show; they meant nothing either to Corish or to his speechwriters.
Within the Labour inner cabal it was perceived that, with the radical spirit of youth during that era, socialism was a possible password to office. The captive Corish, like any well-trained
circus pony, simply went along in the expectation of a lump of sugar at the conclusion of his act.
With a well-equipped head office, for a change, and more money than usual, we set out to fight the 1969 election. Though I was as anxious as anyone for radical change, I was uneasy about such an
over-optimistic estimate for the promised socialist millenium. It seemed to me to be wrong to promise, in the context of our still predominantly conservative Irish society, the unattainable ideal
of socialism in the ’seventies.
Just in time for the annual Labour Party Conference, I felt compelled to write two articles, which appeared in the
Irish Times
, questioning the socialist protestations of the Labour
leadership. I proposed an alternative prospect for an entirely new left, arising from within the three existing parties. In the Labour Party, our sole claim to be a rallying point for a radical
re-grouping was the reality of James Connolly, our socialist founder. Outside that, there was little we had to offer in the form of left-wing radical or socialist thought. Though all three
political parties were predominantly conservative, there were among the rank and file men and women who would have joined a liberal or socialist party had such a party existed. Increasing literacy
had bred young people who recognised the dangers of taking their politics with their nationality and religion as compulsory parental birthrights. A genuine alternative to civil war politics was
needed. A new re-grouping on conscious ideological lines was suggested by me as a pre-condition to the creation of new political structures in the Republic along western European lines.