Once upon a time in Ireland when the sun always shone and Fianna Fail always had a comfortable majority, the then Finance Minister Charles J. Haughey was unable to turn up to the Dail on Budget Day because he had fallen off his horse. As ever, i there were those begrudgers who attributed his 'shoulder' injury to something else entirely, but this is not that kind of paper.
Charley's principal mortal sin is that he has never managed to win a majority in the Dail since he became leader of Fianna Fail in 1979. In the recent local elections the Fianna Fail share of the vote fell to 38 per cent. A party which has dominated politics in the South since de Valera formed his first government in 1932 finds this unforgivable.
His government only survives with the support of Des O'Malley's Progressive Democrats. Then there is the ongoing problem with his friend Larry Goodman.
Goodman is Europe's biggest beef trader and dominates a large slice of 26 county agriculture. He was given millions of pounds in state-subsidised loans to develop the Irish beef industry. But the money seems to have been diverted to other purposes such as funding Goodman's take-over bids. Following the World in Action programme on alleged fraud in the Goodman Group, Haughey has been forced to set up a public inquiry.
To cap it all, he had to sack his deputy Brian Lenihan because Lenihan was caught lying, trying, as it happens, to cover up for what is assumed to be an earlier indiscretion by his leader. Lenihan went on to lose the Presidency (a Fianna Fail retirement home) to Mary Robinson.
The main reason for Fianna Fail's declining share of the vote is the IMF inspired financial strait jacket which means fewer goodies to sweeten the voters. Without such incentives Fianna Fail's working class support steadily ebbs away.
Despite fulsome praise for their economic progress in the British press, the economy is in poor shape. Unemployment is stuck at 18% even with high emigration. It is estimated that a third of the population live on or below the poverty line. If present trends continue it is estimated that 500,000 people will leave the country in the period 1980 to 2000, half the number who left during the Great Famine of the Haughey needs a deal with the British not just to distract attention from the crisis, to bolster his position in Fianna Fail or to win himself something in the history books.' Security' spending is a drain on the 26-County economy and affects every area including tourism. Then there is the economic cost of the border itself, recently estimated at £3 billion over 5 anti-Poll Tax demonstrations.
Practical steps
Every APT group should be making it their main priority to support those facing the bailifts or imprisonment. People need both practical help and political solidarity. Practical help ranges from legal advice to fundraising for prisoners and their dependants Political solidarity is more im portant. It helps to know that there is a strong movement be hind you if you are defying the state. It is also political solidarity that can stop the victimization of individuals.' The savage sentences imposed on people arrested after the Battle of Trafalgar are the result of the attacks upon them in the media by Hattersley and by the 'leaders' of the APTM, Steve Nally and Tommy Sheridan. If the APTM and the Labour Movement had been quick to defend these people, they would have received completely different treatment by the coite All the as a result of the APT demonstrations need the ull unconditional support o he movement. The APTM ha years in lost output and about 45, 000 jobs.
This is the basis of revisionism' which has sprouted amongst the southern intelligentsia over the past few years. The recent celebration (if that's not too strong a word) of the 75th anniversary of the 1916 Rising show the scale of such self-doubt among the Dublin ruling class.
In the face of the pre vious crisis Fianna Fail abandoned their self sufficiency policy and opened the economy to foreign investment.
That worked for about Charles Haughey 20 years, especially fol-. lowing entry to the EEC in 1972. Haughey took over the leadership of Fianna Fail in 1979 just as Irish taxpayers began to revolt against the tax levels needed to subsidise foreign investment. His attempts to square the circle ended in a massive government Given Haughey's appalling record in government on everything from the Birmingham 6 to extradition, and his understandable need to keep his traditional base intact at a time when the traditional instrument, government spending, was running into a debt crisis, the vehemence of the ruling class attack on him seems surprising. But that is to leave out of account the blind panic, almost despair, of the southern ruling. class in the early It is against this background that we must assess the prospects for the so called Brooke Initiative. The ending of the talks should not be taken to mean the end of the process which began with the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement. The Agreement is de facto recognition of the six-county state - what Haughey in 1983 called that failed political entity '- in return for the right to be consulted on matters such as security.
Yet of all the parties, except perhaps the SDLP, Haughey was most anxious to deal and was being urged to do so, at almost any cost, by the southern ruling class. They have no strategic interest in unity. What they most fear is a return of the nightmare scenario of the early 1980s when an economic crisis coincided with mass upsurges a round the national quesMajor instead of the unionist Thatcher, Lion. They hope the British, led by can persuade the Unionists into some kind of arrangement which will defuse the North 'as an issue.
Hence new moods are constantly being discovered. The election of Mary Robinson is taken as the end of 'civil war politics' and of course, the demand for unity. History is revised. Nationalism is dead and the new Europe beckons, especially regional aid. In the midst of this rodeo Charley hangs on. But only just.