A gifted leader of the opposition: Turner’s Taoisigh: My Brush With Kildare Street

Turner’s Taoisigh: My Brush With Kildare Street

Author: Martyn Turner

ISBN-13: 0

Publisher: Irish Times Books

Guideline Price: €12.99

Martyn Turner moved from Belfast to Dublin in 1976, and this book is a reminder of what a fortunate move that was for Irish Times readers. By providing a cartoon for this newspaper almost daily for more than four decades, Turner has cemented his status as a uniquely brilliant caricaturist and a witty and biting satirist.

In this book, as well as showcasing new and updated cartoons and publishing some that did not see publication on legal advice – Turner is no fan of “our chronically one-sided libel laws” – he has also provided a potted history of Irish political leadership and lack thereof over the past 40 years, as well as a broad sweep of the farce and fierceness of Irish politics.

For good measure he throws in some personal reminiscences, hints about what makes him tick, and anecdotes about the reactions some of his cartoons have provoked. Readers of this book are in for a treat: it is a pleasure to have such a comprehensive record of Turner’s sustained excellence.

Turner has an anarchic approach to writing, frequently making up his own words. But so what? Although the words are fun, bizarre and revealing, it is, of course, the cartoons that matter – and they are masterful. What gives him his edge and longevity as an artist who has rarely failed to capture in a cartoon what acres of newsprint will not? Natural talent, of course, but also the taoisigh he has shadowed.

He began lampooning Liam Cosgrave and Jack Lynch in the late 1970s; it was their successors’ shenanigans that gave him ample scope for his creative abilities, and the new pace of politics; by the 1980s “what was drawn at breakfast could be torn up by lunchtime and what was drawn after lunch could be out of date by teatime”.

He has excelled at depicting Charles Haughey (“who ran the country into the ground”), Garret FitzGerald (“what wasn’t there to like?”), Albert Reynolds (“Mr Business in a cowboy hat . . . a joy for satirists and cartoonists”), Bertie Ahern (“You couldn’t make him up. Although, truth be told, I think he did. Make himself up.”), Brian Cowen (“his reign of error . . . a gift for the cartoonist”) and Enda Kenny (“doesn’t really look like anything caricaturable”).

Ahern gets the most space here because of the length of his tenure: “I must say, I enjoyed the Bertie years. He had a great uniform, yellow suits and anoraks, and thanks to the tribunals, he was a politician who just went on giving.”

The book is also a reminder of the changes and continuities in Irish politics over the past 40 years, including the dominance of narcissism, corruption, preoccupation with spin and lies, waste of taxpayers’ money, the peace process, the influence of the EU and the causes and consequences of economic meltdown.

His new colour cartoon of Haughey at his desk surrounded by seven portraits and a bust of himself is devastatingly accurate. The cartoon he crafted on the day Haughey retired, in 1992, was not published in the newspaper because of legal concerns; thankfully, it has now been published in the book.

In the cartoon Haughey asks this question: “35 years of public service and what have you to show for it at the end?” This was the answer from Turner: “A 280 acre suburban estate valued at £8 million, a 200 acre island . . . further property in Sligo and Waterford, a boat, some horses . . . ministerial pensions.”

In contrast, the cartoon published when FitzGerald died, in 2011, depicts a man looking mournfully at reports of his death and concluding, “He was pretty unique . . . He gave politics a good name.”

Turner was also insightful in signposting the trouble that was being stored up during the Celtic Tiger period; one carton from 1999 sees Ahern pushing a full shopping trolley with a toddler sitting in the trolley screaming, “Roads! More roads! Train set! Build! Build! Develop! More! More! More!” Ahern’s soothing words to the toddler are, “OK, Tiger, anything you say.”

The electorate is not absolved from blame; Ahern is also depicted looking at opinion-poll figures, in 2001, showing Fine Gael plummeting and Fianna Fáil on the rise. Ahern wonders, “How many more scandals do we need to get an overall majority?” In 2003 Turner inverted the awful Fianna Fáil general-election poster from the previous year, a smug Ahern declaring, in Turner’s version, “A lot done . . . and you have been.”

Depending on where they were and what they were doing during particular eras, readers will have their memories jogged or their anger reactivated by individual cartoons. My favourite one from the Reynolds era is from 1992, the year of the X-case abortion controversy and debates about women’s right to source information about abortion and travel abroad for abortions. Reynolds emerges in loin cloth from a cave and announces to a cavewoman, “Women . . . you may travel! . . You can read stuff!” Alongside the cartoon is this text: “Quiz of the Week: This touching scene from Irish history occurred in: 1992BC, 1392AD or 1992AD.” It has lost little of its relevance, like many of his finest cartoons.

In more recent times one of the gems depicts a bedraggled Brian Cowen, in 2010, after his infamous radio interview and his infamous sore throat: “I do not have a hangover from my activities . . . You do!!”

Turner describes the role of the political cartoonist as a “bit like being in opposition”. We have been well served by the quality of this star opposition performer. Long may he continue to thrive in that role. Diarmaid Ferriter is professor of modern history at University College Dublin