My mother always remarked of my father: ‘He was cute enough not to tell me he was Fianna Fáil until we were well married.’
Election time in our house was tense. Myko was a lifelong, unquestioning Fianna Fáil man. He supported them down the line. It was a recurring source of frustration to Teresa.
‘For such a bright man in other ways,’ she would say to her audience, and in his presence, ‘wouldn’t you think he would have seen through them?’ No doubt, much of Myko’s loyalty was rooted in memories of his father, Joe, who had been involved on Dev’s side during the Civil War and had also been on the run from the Black and Tans during the War of Independence.
The Moriartys, on the other hand, were pro-Treaty to their core, Fine Gael all the way. The family would always be active at election times and some of the Moriartys of my grandfather’s generation were county councillors. When politics and the state of the country were being discussed in our house, every excuse was found to place the blame for any catastrophe at the door of the ‘Long Fellow’, Eamon de Valera. In the Moriarty interpretation of politics, Dev was the source of most that was wrong with Ireland. The only non-Fine Gael beneficiary of a Moriarty vote was Dan Spring. At that time, the Dingle peninsula was part of the North Kerry constituency and Dan was the Labour Party TD. The Moriartys always gave him a scratch at general elections. The ‘scratch’ would have been a third preference, having already voted for the two Fine Gael candidates. My mother would explain the vote for Spring on the basis that he was a decent man. He was that, but I’m certain that the vote was directed more at keeping Fianna Fáil out than with keeping Spring and Labour in!
When our near neighbour and one of Teresa’s customers, Michael Begley, was elected as a Fine Gael county councillor and later as Dingle’s first Fine Gael TD, there was jubilation. Michael was not a man to take prisoners, and he had many a heated argument with Foxy John and Uncle Patty. Nonetheless, they supported him loyally and canvassed for him for years.
So it was in this maelstrom of blueshirt politics that Myko found himself, and, fair dues, he fought his corner well against all the odds. Though the Moriartys always pushed the Fine Gael case, Myko approached things differently; he never proselytised for Fianna Fáil and never consciously tried to change a person’s mind in that direction, but he left you in no doubt as to his views. He had one minor but continuing victory and that was in the matter of newspapers. The Moriartys read the Irish Independent only; the Irish Press was de Valera’s propaganda machine and had no place in a Fine Gael house. Except that Myko was the one who bought the newspaper every day, and he chose the Press every time.
‘You bought that old paper again,’ Teresa would say in disgust. But it didn’t stop him. It provided me with a choice of reading: Rip Kirby and Denis the Menace in the Indo at my grandmother’s, and Captain Mac and The Phantom in the Press at home.
Despite his own pronounced and unremitting party political bias, Myko’s general position on political activity and the furtherance of democracy was well thought through and admirable. He absolutely refused ever to discuss the pros and cons, or the events of the Civil War, taking the view that it was a black period of our history that was best left alone, not to be examined or discussed until all participants were dead. Even then he felt that it should be left to academic consideration and interpretation by the historians of the day.
‘Politics should concentrate on events of today. Leave history to the historians,’ was his credo. It was not bad advice, and Irish politics might have matured much more quickly if prominent politicians had taken a similar view earlier in the history of the State.
One day, when I was in my very early teens, Myko brought me home a rolled-up piece of newsprint. It was torn at the edges and not very clean; the print was smudged in places and the paper was yellowing and dried out. He handed it to me in the most matter-of-fact way and I took it from him without any show of appreciation for what became, in time, the most invaluable material gift of my childhood and one which I treasure to this day.
‘Con Lucey was cleaning out his sister’s house – she died recently in Cork – when he came across this,’ he said. ‘He was going to throw it out because he felt it had no place in a Cumann na nGael house, but he asked me if I had any use for it.’
I could sense Myko’s excitement as we unrolled the paper. ‘It’s the 1916 Proclamation of the Republic,’ he announced. ‘Probably the most important document of its day, and it’s an original.’
Big deal, I thought to myself. Maybe the fact that it was on its way to the dump convinced me that it was not worth much.
‘Apparently, on the day of the Rising a large number of the Proclamations were sent down to West Cork,’ Myko went on. ‘It has been in the Lucey house ever since. But they took Michael Collins’s side in the Civil War, so they don’t have any value in it now. I don’t know that the Civil War position should make any difference to the Proclamation, but people are people!’
To my shame, and, I’m sure, to Myko’s disappointment, I was less than impressed with his gift. In my defence it could be stated that it did not look like any copy of the Proclamation I had ever seen, all of which were a half-page in size. I did, however, keep it and took it with me whenever I moved. It was stuck on the wall of my bedroom at home and again in my room at college. I valued it for sentimental reasons, having received it directly from my father. But apart from using it once or twice as a teaching aid in classroom history lessons, and being impressed by the breadth of vision of its creators on matters of equality and social justice, I never paid much heed to it and never thought that much of it or about it.
Never, that is, until my election to the Senate in 1987. Framed in the main hall of Leinster House I saw something that looked absolutely identical to my own copy of the Proclamation, except that this one had a signed inscription by former President Seán T O’Kelly, confirming that it was an original. For the first time I felt a sense of excitement about the old rolled-up document. Like meeting an old friend in a faraway place.
I examined in detail the Leinster House copy. The size, paper quality and print smudging looked the same as mine. I made a note of the various little print errors – where a letter was out of line or where there were other print marks – and then compared them with my own one at home. The lettering and text were the same in every way, but the print marks and smudges were different. I was thoroughly disappointed to find that it was not an exact copy. Some months later I mentioned it casually to a printer acquaintance.
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘of course yours is not an exact copy. If it were then it wouldn’t be authentic. There were no copying machines in those days. They were printed off like news sheets, each one coming through the machine individually. The marks of the casings around the print lead and the ink smudges could not be the same on every sheet. Even though they would all be very similar, it is unlikely that any two would be exactly identical.’
After a bit of research, I came across a pamphlet on the Proclamation which gave the story of its printing. The Proclamation was produced by two printers from Capel Street. They used a printing press in the basement of Liberty Hall. The account related how they ran short of some letters and had to make do in some cases with different fonts; how they ran out of the letter ‘e’; how they only had enough type to set half of the Proclamation; how they did that, then turned it top to bottom and, having set the second half, ran it through again. For that reason all original Proclamations have a misalignment between the top and bottom halves. A second run was printed some months later, but these had none of the flaws of the original. I could see immediately that in my Proclamation the top and bottom were slightly out of line. I went through the other checks with the printer and he confirmed its authenticity.
It was a tremendous discovery and even more so when I established that there are now only a dozen original Proclamations intact. Today that rolled-up piece of paper I received so ungratefully from Myko is one of my most valued possessions. Many in modern Ireland tend to dismiss anything relating to 1916, but the fact is that the Proclamation is a most progressive document in many ways, reflecting the most worthy principles of equality and interculturalism. Though most Irish people have never read the Constitution, many of them, including senior politicians, believe that the imperative about ‘cherishing all of the children of the nation equally’ is in the Constitution. It never was. The only place it has ever been enshrined is in the Proclamation. I still regularly read the fourth paragraph of the Proclamation that guarantees, inter alia, civil and religious rights to all our citizens. A bit like Christianity, it was never given a fair chance by the vested interests.
Hilda Moriarty was a close friend and cousin of Teresa’s in Dingle. She was a most popular and strikingly attractive woman. Apparently, she broke hearts. But she was forgiven. While studying medicine in Dublin, she had a flat in Raglan Road. A penniless poet who lived in the area befriended her. According to Teresa, Hilda did not have too much time for him. When she was moving to better accommodation down the road, the poor poet helped her move to the new place by carrying her stuff down the road balanced precariously on his bicycle.
‘Sure, Hilda used only laugh at him,’ Teresa would say, but from my own experience of Hilda, I could not imagine her ever being anything other than nice to people around her. She was a lovely woman in every way.
Anyway, the poet’s name was Patrick Kavanagh. He expressed his love for her in the beautiful ballad ‘Raglan Road’, which he wrote about her and as a tribute to her. I studied Kavanagh and even met him once, but unfortunately knew nothing of his association with the family at the time. What a missed opportunity! As if that was not enough claim to fame, Hilda then went on to make a match that caused consternation in the family – she became engaged to a handsome Limerick solicitor named Donogh O’Malley.
The problem from the Dingle perspective was that the prospective bridegroom was Fianna Fáil through and through. How would the Moriartys cope with this? Donogh arrived to meet Hilda’s people in Dingle. Her father, Dr Paddy, had died by that time, so it was mainly the extended family. They met him; they poured drink into him; they would be proper but reserved hosts and then bid him goodbye. But they had not reckoned on one factor: Donogh was too damn like them.
A wild man, with no limits, he loved the drink, the craic, the arguments. They couldn’t resist his personality. In no time at all he was one of them. They avoided, dismissed, or ignored his political atheism to the true Blueshirt God. He was forever welcome. Every summer they came back to Dingle for their holidays. Hilda would come down in July with her two children, Daragh and Deirbhile, her white Morris Minor packed with holiday bits and pieces. Almost every day she would call to our house in the Mall for a chat with Teresa; we thought she was lovely. Though we were slightly older than her children, she would often take a few of us to the beach. She loved Ventry beach, where her father had at one time owned a seaside cottage. It seemed to me that she went there every day.
Donogh, who was by then an up-and-coming TD, would join her in August. My memory of him is of a friendly, approachable and interesting man who had time for people around him and was full of the joys of life.
Some years later, in 1967, when I was a member of the student committee of St Patrick’s College in Drumcondra, on the day of the formal opening of the new college buildings, the college authorities invited me to greet the President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, and the Minister for Education, Donogh O’Malley in the hospitality room after Mass. It was my job to ensure that they were occupied and entertained for some minutes while the college clergy were disrobing after the church ceremonies and the official blessing. Donogh was in great form and had a great welcome for me. As usual, he talked openly and forthrightly about his plans. He was going to merge certain departments of UCD and Trinity colleges; in his opinion there was too much duplication. He was, for instance, going to locate the entire Engineering faculty in UCD. He had a plan that he felt was certain to work.
‘How will you get agreement on it? Won’t there be opposition?’ I asked him because I knew enough of student politics to be aware of the tensions between the two Dublin universities.
He looked at me, somewhat askance. ‘Well, I’m just going to announce it!’
Then he saw that President de Valera was on his own. ‘Will you go over to that Long Fellow over there; nobody seems to be talking to him. Open up with a few focail Gaeilge, he likes that.’
I was very taken aback by Donogh’s irreverence towards the founder of his party, even though I was well aware of the regular rows between them when Dev was Taoiseach and Donogh was constantly in public scrapes.
‘Go on, fuck off over to him,’ said the Minister for Education, heading for the corner of the room furthest away from his great leader.
Dev was, as ever, wearing a dark suit with a red Fáinne embroidered on the lapel. I was well accustomed to pictures of him with his wire-rimmed glasses and had read all the jokes about him being half-blind, so I was amazed by his striking, brown eyes and his clear skin.
Making conversation was difficult. We got off to a very slow start, with me making all the running, and hardly any response from him. He was relaxed, but not inclined to talk.
In some desperation I asked him what would he have liked most in life if he had never gone into public life.
‘I’d love to have lived quietly, on an island of my own, where I could have lived life as I chose without interference and where I would be in charge.’
Unthinkingly I blurted out, ‘Sure you got that anyway.’
In fairness to him, he laughed. After that he loosened up.
I often thought afterwards that he had set me up with his comment. Dev’s sight was very poor at that time and it must have been most frustrating for him to be moving about in large groups when he did not recognise people.
I never met Donogh O’Malley after that day; within two years he was dead from a heart attack. People of all parties and none felt the loss and grieved. His progressive decisions as minister, particularly in the area of free secondary education, had touched every family in Ireland.
However, the proposal to amalgamate departments of the two universities, which he had so casually outlined to me that day in St Pat’s, never happened. I think it was the churches that put a stop to the idea. I mean, how could we condone Catholics being exposed to the naked Protestantism of Trinity College?
The fact that Hilda was not chosen by Fianna Fáil as the by-election candidate to fill Donogh’s seat after his death confirmed my mother’s view of the party’s undependability. Many years later, on the evening of Hilda’s own funeral, Teresa rang me. ‘That yoke Haughey never even came to the funeral, with all his old talk about his friendship with Donogh and Hilda. In fairness, Brianeen Lenihan was there, but I always thought he was the best of them.’
The importance of our participation in the democratic process was drummed into us by Myko and Teresa. No excuse would be tolerated by either of them as a justification for not voting in elections. Myko maintained that, apart from all other matters, the memory of generations of people who had agitated and fought for the right of the Irish to vote was insulted and offended by us not exercising the franchise. His core argument, however, was that people had a responsibility to contribute to the organisation and management of their country and should acquaint themselves with the policies of those standing for election in order to support those closest to their views. He was unshakeable on the issue.
‘And what,’ I once asked him, ‘if there were no such candidate presenting?’
Myko had no doubts on that one. ‘Then you have a responsibility as a democrat to organise that an appropriate person be identified and encouraged to run as a candidate.’
‘And if that proved impossible?’
Myko’s answer was devastating in its simplicity. ‘Then you should stand yourself.’
The real irony of all this, and probably a major factor in forming his views, was the fact that as a member of the Garda Siochána he was not entitled to vote. That law was not changed until he was middle-aged. I well remember that he was like an excited child the day he cast his first vote.
Myko was forever philosophising on government and political life. A favourite theme of his was the nonsense of appointing a teacher as Minister for Education, or a doctor as Minister for Health. He would argue that to appoint as minister someone who was already an expert in the area was to misunderstand the process of government. The minister’s function was to listen to the case from all sides, take and assess all the available expertise and then make a decision in the best interest of the common good. Putting in place someone who held clear views formulated from having been inside the profession simply ensured bias and was a recipe for trouble. Myko loved legislation and the legislative process. He enjoyed pointing out the illegality or incorrectness of ordinary things.
Take, for instance, the commonly seen notice: Trespassers will be prosecuted. ‘They may or they may not be,’ he would say. Proposed or pending legislation came in for particular scrutiny. One of his favourite sayings was that nothing devalued the process of legislation as much as the enactment of a law which either could not, or would not be enforced. Undoubtedly, he must have poured scorn on the Dog Muzzling Act and the Stray Horses Act.
Sometime during my late teens, Teresa and Myko began to worry that my interest in politics was pushing me down an unacceptable road. They had formed the impression that I was inclining towards Labour and the Left end of the political spectrum. This was too much for them. Both of them seemed prepared to put aside their own particular bias to ensure that my resting place would be either Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. To be a Labour follower at a time when that party was proclaiming that ‘The Seventies would be Socialist’ was too big a worry. Labour-Socialism-Communism was the link that worried them. They even went so far as to arrange for a political activist to talk to me and to convince me of the error of my ways.
I never joined any political party. That is nothing to cheer about and is, I believe, a loss to myself. All my life, while maintaining a strongly independent political line, I have admired those brave enough to compromise to the extent of becoming party members. I have never felt able to do that. I admire those independent politicians who take a strong view on broad societal issues. They have a significant contribution to make. On the other hand, I have never been able to take seriously those single-issue, supposedly independent politicians who claim that because of their independence they are somehow cleaner, more moral, more honest and more wholesome than any party members.