Fintan O’Toole

In the three-year build-up to the 2011 general election, there was a growing sense of radicalization in Irish society. It is true that the focus of much of the exploration was dismayingly narrow, and the energy behind it the product of an uncritical and often selective rage. But still, there was the possibility of the crystallization of Irish self-awareness in a moment of resolution and constructive hopefulness, perhaps even a political initiative of some sort.

One by one, the great institutions of Irish life had fallen into disrepute: the Catholic Church, the banking system, the apparatus of government, the European ‘project’ and the political party system. There had been scandals affecting An Garda Síochána and the business community. Through the second half of 2008 and into 2009, every day seemed to bring further bad news. The Irish people contemplated the extent of the confidence trick that had been perpetrated upon them. Their blind faith in a political/economic system driven by the avaricious desires of the few, rather than the modest needs of the many, had delivered Ireland into a degree of perdition that even the most morose of Jeremiahs had failed to predict. By 2010, the Irish people had become so shell-shocked that even the arrival in November of the International Monetary Fund was, by the time it happened, something of a relief.

Out of this dismal picture emerged the unspoken possibility that everything might be persuaded to change, if only because everything had to. As 2011 dawned, it seemed that all was set, at last, to change utterly. For more than two years, the incumbent Fianna Fáil/Green coalition government had resisted innumerable calls to allow the Irish people a say in the drift of some of the most calamitous events in Irish history. Then, an announcement by the Green Party of its intention to withdraw from government in early 2011 was followed by a series of slapstick events that led, on 1 February 2011, to the announcement of the general election.

For a brief moment it seemed that anything might happen. As the public waited for the election date to be announced, the mood was strangely subdued. It was already clear that the two government parties would be routed in the coming poll. But it was also obvious that there was no great stomach for the most obvious alternative: some kind of coalition between Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

There had been rumours for some time about a new political movement, gravitating mainly around a handful of media personalities who had been vocal in criticizing the policies and performance of the outgoing government, identifying the nature of Irish political culture as the key factor in the national undoing. Over the previous couple of years, journalists like Fintan O’Toole, Shane Ross and David McWilliams had been delivering fiery speeches to large gatherings all around the country, affirming that they were as mad as hell and a change was gonna hafta come. Then, as 2011 dawned, it was whispered that these people were meeting in smoke-free rooms to discuss the possibility of snatching the steering wheel from the political establishment that had driven us into the abyss. In the Dáil, Mary O’Rourke, the Great Irish Mammy of one of Ireland’s oldest political dynasties, spoke mockingly of ‘wonderful gurus standing in what one could describe as posh areas’. The Irish people could hardly wait for this to happen so that they could give Mary the bum’s rush.

And then, one Saturday morning in late January, the Irish people woke up to the announcement that the revolution had been aborted due to difficulties in obtaining a babysitter. In a lengthy article in the Irish Times, the assistant editor of that newspaper, Fintan O’Toole, told the distraught Irish people that he could not lead them after all. Yes, it was true, he and a number of others had been planning to run for election. In the previous few weeks, Fintan confided that, over the previous weeks, he had been considering putting his deposit where his mouth had been by running for the Dáil. It was time, he had resolved, to go beyond the idea that ‘somebody somewhere should do something’. There was, he acknowledged, ‘a very deep hunger for someone (almost anyone) from outside the existing political culture to step into the arena and champion a process of radical change’. Even ‘nice, sensible people’ had been pleading with him to run for public office and save Ireland from itself.

Having ruled out running for an established party or as an independent, he had, he revealed, joined with David McWilliams and unnamed others in an attempt to launch a movement that would seek to reclaim Irish democracy from the deathly grip of the party system. The idea was for a bunch of candidates with a track record of civic achievement in business, the arts, community and voluntary activity, sport, and single-issue campaigns to get together and seek a common platform. It was to be called ‘Democracy Now’.

Fintan spelt out once again the many deficiencies he had identified in Irish political culture. He reiterated his belief that the austerity measures being promoted by most of the established parties would be socially and economically disastrous. The Irish people were not arguing. ‘Bring it on!’ they essayed as the toast burned – this was just what the doctor ordered.

Alas, as they read on, the Irish people would have noted the incremental shift in Fintan’s prose from the present to the past tense and, even more ominously, to the past conditional. ‘The challenge’, declared Fintan, ‘is that the project would have to have a large scale in order to be meaningful.’ It would ‘have to have’ a realistic chance of getting at least twenty people elected. Two things had been clear to them from the outset of this project, wrote Fintan: one was that they had a moral duty to do it; the other was that they had a moral duty not to screw it up. A national crisis was not an occasion for enthusiastic amateurism. ‘An inadequate effort wouldn’t be a noble failure. It would be worse than doing nothing at all because it would raise hopes and then dash them. The last thing Irish democracy needs right now is another reason for despair. If the point of a campaign was to remind people that they do have power, it would be unforgivable to leave them feeling even more powerless.’

Yes, yes, yes, implored the Irish people, willfully ignoring Fintan’s shift of tense, but the revolution, the revolution . . .

The revolution, revealed Fintan, was not going to happen. Time, he explained, was against it. They had been expecting the election to be held in late March, not February, and the sudden, ignominious disintegration of the Cowen administration had thrown everything out of kilter. It wasn’t a matter of funding or logistics, but mainly of family and employment issues affecting him and other prospective candidates. As some of these had indicated their reluctance to proceed, the doubts of others had started to grow. The revolution had been stillborn.

Fintan was aware that he would be accused of chickening out, ‘of climbing up the diving board only to scurry back down the ladder’, but this, he had decided, was not a time for glorious gestures. Having been reminded that analysing the world is a lot easier than changing it, Fintan was returning to the job he was ‘best fitted for’.

The Irish people scratched their heads – if Fintan and his mates had really believed things were as bad as they had been saying, how could something as banal as the timing of the election have such a critical impact on their decisions? If we were truly, as Fintan had told them, at a moment of unprecedented national emergency, how could he return to his day job with any real expectation that this day job was going to be safe – safer, that is, than any of the thousands already lost as a consequence of the amorality and cronyism that Fintan had so roundly denounced?

Thus it was that the defining moment of the 2011 general election occurred not during the campaign, on polling day or the day of the count, but approximately a week before the election date was announced. This moment was fateful because, by then, the leaders of the incipient Democracy Now movement had insinuated themselves into the public consciousness as bearers of a new hope that past mistakes and wrongdoings could be overcome. Then, having drawn the hopes and desires of the Irish people to themselves, these men decided – for undoubtedly good, practical and sensible reasons – to withdraw and return to the sidelines.

By briefly confusing their role of commentating with that of representing, Fintan and his fellow would-be revolutionaries led the people on towards the glimmer of light they indicated somewhere up ahead. And then, by their retreat, they implied something else: either that things were not as bad as they had intimated, or that things were beyond redemption. Nobody could be entirely certain which it was.

After this, the election became a matter of settling for the safest option: a secure administration to continue the work of the last – free, to an extent, from the shadows and stains of the past.

Although it did not field any candidates, Democracy Now was the defining force of the 2011 election. It kidnapped the hopes and dreams of the Irish people and subjected them to a controlled explosion in the public square.