Fianna Fail moves the goal posts

According to the Sunday Tribune, Beverley Cooper-Flynn got a lot of sympathy at the Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting last Wednesday, "particularly when she referred to Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole, a long-time bete noire of Fianna Fail.

"According to those present, Cooper-Flynn told the meeting that on a recent Later with O'Leary programme on RTE television, O'Toole, commenting on Cooper-Flynn's libel bill, had said that it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. An emotional Cooper-Flynn stressed that she had never met O'Toole and that he didn't know her. Talk about pushing an open door. As one observer put it: To say this to an audience of Fianna Failers, well, you can imagine the reaction".

Beverley Cooper-Flynn was right. I did say rather facetiously on that programme that it couldn't have happened to a nicer person. I take it back. There are lots and lots of nicer people to whom it could have happened. The country is full of them.

I wonder, though, whether those whose hearts went out to Beverley had any thoughts about the rest of that programme. The subject for discussion was alleged media bias against Fianna Fail. The case for the prosecution was put by Beverley's erstwhile comrade-in-arms, Willie O'Dea. Exhibit A was my own insistence that Fianna Fail should distance itself from Ms Cooper-Flynn following the jury's findings.

This, said the junior Minister, was a prime example of bias. Only a prejudiced propagandist would have the gall to suggest that Fianna Fail should come to any judgment on Beverley Cooper-Flynn until the legal process had been exhausted by an appeal of her libel action.

Asking for condemnation now was clear evidence of an agenda to denigrate the party. Seventy-two hours later, however, Bertie Ahern was on RTE radio telling the nation: "We take a very dim view of this particular case, and we have stated that I think people are extremely annoyed about this and believe that tax evasion is wrong and encouraging others to do it is equally wrong. We take a dim and a very serious view of all of this".

WITHIN three days Beverley Cooper-Flynn was expelled from the parliamentary party. On Willie O'Dea's criteria, it seems clear that the hottest hotbed of anti-Fianna Fail bias is the Fianna Fail parliamentary party.

One of the things that did most to bring the old communist parties into disrepute was the way otherwise intelligent and feisty members slavishly followed the party line. If the line changed, they might find themselves arguing with equal passion and rigour the opposite of what they had argued last week. Thus it now is with Fianna Fail.

Shortly after the jury's judgment in the Cooper-Flynn case, the line came down from the Taoiseach: nothing much could be said until all possible legal proceedings had been exhausted. "It would," decreed the Taoiseach, "be inappropriate for me to comment in detail on the outcome of the proceedings at this stage, given that the matter could yet be the subject of an appeal to the Supreme Court. She is entitled to due process."

This line was followed with impeccable diligence, even by those with some reputation for independent thought.

Thus Eamon O Cuiv on Questions and Answers: "We should take our time in relation to the question of membership of the parliamentary party. We should wait until the whole [legal] process is finalised". Obeying their briefings, intelligent adults like Eamon O Cuiv and Willie O'Dea, men with sufficient authority to be junior Ministers, told the nation that their own clear judgment was that no criticism of Beverley Cooper-Flynn could be made until all the legal avenues had been explored.

Then, quite suddenly and without any significant developments in relation to a possible appeal, the line changed. The signal went out that it was now OK to criticise Beverley because "we" were extremely annoyed and took a dim view of her conduct in encouraging tax evasion. Goodbye due process, hello expulsion.

I'M A bit confused by all of this. Was I biased on a Thursday night when I went on that programme and then became unbiased when the Taoiseach belatedly adopted the same line on Sunday afternoon? Or does this work like the McCarthyite crime of premature anti-fascism where being against Hitler before it became official policy was taken as evidence of belonging to a red conspiracy?

Is truth a matter of timing, so that if you say it before it is the party line you are clearly an anti-national conspirator, while if you say it afterwards you are a good and faithful commentator?

It seems to work that way. Willie O'Dea wrote this time last year that "those who followed Charlie Haughey in the face of specious attacks by a hostile opposition and media now feel a far greater sense of disillusionment than those who disliked Haughey and others in my party for all the wrong reasons".

Think about that: attacking Haughey before it was convenient for the party to distance itself from him was saying the right things for the wrong reasons and therefore spurious. The same, presumably, goes for Beverley. But then, don't mind me, I'm biased.