PROFILE:A champion of worthy causes from Iraq to El Salvador, Michael D Higgins has been an unashamed intellectual all his life
OF ALL the insults you could hurl in Irish public life, calling someone an intellectual was the most devastating, the writer Seán Ó Faoláin once remarked. What, then, are we to make of the imminent election of Michael D Higgins, for whom unashamed intellectualism has been a life-long byword, as the next president of Ireland?
In essence, the election pitted two conflicting world views against each other: the cerebral socialist Higgins and his emphasis on creativity, the arts and inclusivity on the one hand; and Seán Gallagher, with his simple message of positivity and job creation on the other.
Higgins himself remarked once that to be an intellectual was “a very much greater disability than being sexually perverse”. The result gives the 71-year-old a long-desired opportunity to, in James Joyce’s words, “forge the conscience” of his nation.
Expect now words, torrents of them, from the new president – in prose form and poetry, in English and Gaeilge líofa, delivered in that slightly high-pitched west of Ireland accent that somehow manages to sound posh and earthy at the one time. And that’s just Michael D – if anything, Sabina, his wife of over 36 years, can out-talk her loquacious husband with ease.
Expect, too, a breadth of vision to match the Labour politician’s record as a universalist and champion of worthy causes from Iraq to Nicaragua and El Salvador. It’s likely that the doors of Áras an Uachtaráin will be thrown open to the writers, poets and musicians of Ireland, many of whom threw themselves so enthusiastically behind his campaign.
Beyond that, who knows? Higgins gave little enough away during the campaign. He summarised his aims as follows: “I offer a vision of a radically inclusive citizenship, in a creative society, worthy of a real Republic – making us proud to be Irish in the world”. Within the constitutional bounds of the post, he now has a blank slate to make his own mark on the job.
The election was dominated by the spectacular rise and crash of Gallagher, but Higgins still fought a good campaign. He outpaced his main rival on the left, David Norris, at an early stage, continued to add to his core support as the weeks passed and avoided flak with a dexterity you might not expect from the oldest candidate.
Higgins was the candidate most at ease answering questions on the constitutional challenges of the job and managed a few adroit jabs at his main rival – for example, linking Gallagher to the “speculative economy” – without appearing to be unpresidential.
It helped of course that he never had to face the kind of allegations put to other candidates, leading to complaints in some quarters that the media were soft on one of their favourites. The most he had to confess to was smoking cannabis while a student in the US in the 1960s, an admission the electorate appeared to take in its stride.
Like Mary McAleese, Higgins comes from a modest background; his father died in a poorhouse, partly due to alcohol abuse, and he was raised by an unmarried aunt and uncle in a three-room dwelling in rural Co Clare.
He still feels a great sense of loss at being wrenched away from his family at the age of five, he recalled in an interview last year, a loss that he has never fully recovered from.
A “great rage” over the poverty he and his family endured propelled him into politics initially. His background was typical Fianna Fáil smallholder; his father had sided with the republicans in the Civil War and paid the price afterwards when he found himself out of a job.
His first job was as a clerk with the ESB, but at age 20 he enrolled as a mature student in UCG. For a short time, he was in Fianna Fáil and even served as chairman of the university cumann, but joined Labour at Noel Browne’s urging.
Sabina, whom he met in 1969 at a party in the Dublin house of journalist Mary Kenny, was pivotal in converting his youthful anger into intellectual passion. “She made for me a connection between reflection, meditation and awareness,” he said.
Then as now, socialists in the west were as rare as hen’s teeth, but Higgins persevered with politics until he was elected to the Dáil in 1981. Then, he was a passionate radical in the Labour Party, an opponent of coalition but never a devotee of the hard left, and a firebrand critic of “ranchers” and “reactionaries”.
The years mellowed him, and by 1992 he was happy to go into coalition and became minister for arts and culture. Des O’Malley said Higgins would “go mad” in government but this never happened. He set up TG4, introduced tax incentives for the film industry and abolished section 31 broadcasting restrictions.
After Labour lost the 1997 election, he turned to poetry and indulged another great passion by chairing the Dáil foreign affairs committee.
In the 1980s, when Labour was having another of its internal upheavals, then leader Frank Cluskey noticed that Higgins was absent. When told he was on an emergency mission to the Middle East, Cluskey quipped: “Trust Michael D to take the easy option, saving the world over saving the Labour Party”.
Now, as president, he has another chance.
