EILEEN LYDON, 99 last November, got her first Ford in 1929. Since then she has owned 23 cars, all Fords. Now Eileen Lovett, she presides over five generations of her family in Galway.
She is also a Fine Gaeler. “We are going to be the government,” she tells me. Today, the first Saturday of the 2011 general election, she awaits, by special invitation, the arrival of the party leader, Enda Kenny.
Last year, when her daughter bought yet another Ford, the motor company sent them to the Rose of Tralee festival and Eileen got in the paper and was interviewed on the Ray D'Arcyshow. She mentioned being friendly with Henry Kenny, Enda's late father, a member of the 1936 Mayo All-Ireland-winning team. Afterwards, Enda sent her a bouquet of flowers.
It can’t just be me, but all the time I meet people who have had some personal gesture or communication from Enda that went beyond the perfunctory exchanges associated with a clientelist culture. They may have written to him outlining some personal difficulty or grievance.
From other politicians, they may have heard nothing back or received a terse acknowledgement from some functionary. And, then, one day, the phone rings and a voice says, “This is Enda Kenny,” and he has their letter in front of him. Official Ireland nowadays turns its nose up at this kind of thing, but the people who get such calls never forget them and they tell everyone they meet. In Eileen, Enda has an apostle for life. She sits waiting in the lobby of the Meyrick Hotel, telling everyone who will listen, and quite a few who are not interested, that Fine Gael are going to be in government.
Kenny sees these contacts as central to his politics, a subterraneanism that operates on a different channel from the media discussions about leader debates and empty chairs. At one level, one might decide that it demonstrates chiefly a deep cunning. But it is also real. It keeps him in touch with what people are struggling with, how people live, what is not working.
It is a wet Saturday but still a crowd of more than 100 people spills onto Eyre Square, into the pouring rain.
The Meyrick, formerly the Great Southern, is the poshest hotel in Galway. “Posh” here is not, in the capital of the west, the same phenomenon as, for example, in Dublin, but something graceful and unassuming. People shelter from the rain as they wait for Enda’s bus and are not regarded as a nuisance. The waitresses chat to the customers as equals. A bride straight off the altar sits forlornly with her bridesmaids, as though she has lost the rest of the wedding party to Fine Gael.
Instantly, anyone who has grown up in the west can feel in such places an atmosphere different from other parts. There is here a sense of ease that is to be found in no other city, a depth of irony that infiltrates every exchange, a natural egalitarianism that no kind of politics could deliver. If there is still a “real” Ireland, it is here.
In all the talk we’ve had about the “Civil War divide”, it is forgotten that, in the main, this factor related to respective dispositions, as opposed to ideological positions. The true knot of difference relates to the question of warfare. The tribe that would become FG had lost its stomach for war and would come to despise the other shower for unleashing a vicious conflict in which brother would be pitted against brother.
The bellicosity of Dev’s tribe nowadays manifests itself mainly in backslapping but the contrasting sensibilities remain intact and may account for something of the relative fortunes of the parties in the past eight decades or so. The warmongers lost the war but by stealth and cunning won the battle for the Irish heart, if not the Irish mind. Soon, this sneaky victory may be avenged.
In the west, the FF/FG division had little or no “class” dimension, as it seemed to have in other places. Fine Gael down here was never really the party of the merchant classes or the big farmers, but as much a populist movement as Fianna Fáil. A small farmer here is not necessarily always an effen effer. When he starts to speak and a particular kind of seriousness emerges, you identify him as a Fine Gaeler. The attentive ear can detect a quality of refinement in the tone of voice, in the pitch of the laughter, and an added dimension of uprightness, of moralistic literalism in the content of what is said. It is subtle but real, a nuance that I doubt an outsider could detect at all.
Enda Kenny is born of this nuance. Had he come announced as a Fianna Fáiler, he would probably be getting away with it. He has that added quality of gregariousness you associate with Soldiers of Destiny and does the backslapping thing at least as well as they do.
Laughter follows him that is rarely here directed at him. But behind all this is a seriousness of purpose that Fianna Fáilers can only fake.
This is partly why Kenny gets such a bad press at the national level: he is not what the media has become used to as the face and voice of Fine Gael. Down here, though, his personality speaks of Fine Gael as it is in these parts. There is something about the cut of his jib, the curve of his shoulder and the perpetual twinkle in his watchful eye that announces him for what he is. Here, they “get” Enda. Here, actually, they love him.
There is, as he arrives, a palpable sense of excitement, as though it is just dawning on everyone that the man they await is likely to be elected taoiseach in a matter of weeks. For all kinds of reasons it seems incredible: a taoiseach from Mayo?
A taoiseach who really only became leader of his party because all the more obvious candidates from his generation had already failed in the job?
On arrival, Enda greets Eileen Lovett and a thousand photographs are taken of their embrace. Several women activists gather themselves into him and the cameras snap again. “Blessed art though amongst women!” shouts a male voice under an umbrella. “Gangster!” contributes another from a passing car.
Enda is swept towards the Eyre Square shopping mall. A man inside the door, with his child in a go-car, showers Enda with faint praise.
“You’re better than the last fella anyways,” he says. Enda considers this in silence. “You’re more stable,” the man elaborates. Enda, when in doubt, asks them their names, where they’re from and delivers a little homily about the challenges up ahead. The man is happy with this and then shouts for clearance through the gathering throng as he pushes his child homeward.
It’s nearly all friendly fire. Enda has a word for everyone and looks like he’ll stand talking to anyone for as long as his aides will tolerate it. He engages in extended impromptu discussions about abortion, Shell to Sea, the pubic service, and each time sets out his position in full. Mostly people are satisfied just to bend his ear. A young man who announces himself in Irish as a member of Sinn Féin is instructed to “tell Gerry I’ve got him the five-way debate”.
More than half the conversations are in Irish, which Enda speaks with a fluency that belies his múinteoir scoile persona. “It’s a kind of a bilingual canvass,” he declares proudly, with the literalism that so often does him down.
A man on Shop Street urges Enda to make Michael Noonan tánaiste.
“There’s an election to be won before that,” says Enda carefully.
Although it is clear that he can already sniff the upholstery of the State car, he is anxious not to seem presumptuous. Enda meets a main from Waco, Texas, whose baby daughter turns out to be called Aisling.
“We’re pursuing a subtle policy of colonisation,” declares Enda, delighted.
A woman coming against the party on Shop Street shouts out, “Come on, Brian!” A party stalwart takes umbrage. “You wouldn’t think there’d be people like that left in the country,” he says disgustedly.
“Maybe,” says his companion, “she meant Brian Walsh [the local Fine Gael candidate].”
“Oh yeah.”
Nobody wants to see anyone but Enda. He talks to everyone, young or old, Irish or otherwise, drunk or sober. A few lads smoking outside the Quays pub on Quay Street are inclined to throw Dutch-courage banter in his direction. “Keep walking!” cautions one. “The country’s f***ed!” explains another. Enda waves cheerily.
The canvass draws to a close in the House Hotel on Spanish Parade. The bar is empty except for a hen party, a dozen or so clucking girls in off-the-shoulder numbers. When they see Enda, their screeches threaten to shatter the glasses. A lesser man might have made instantly for the rear lounge, but Enda demands to be introduced to the hen. “I arranged this for you, Christine,” shouts a strap of a Galway girl, as the cameras click again. Then the girls start up a rousing chorus of “Take it off, take it off, take it off,” and Enda beats a graceful retreat.
I have not always been kind to Enda but he never takes it personally. In the few minutes when everyone stands around waiting for the six o’clock news, he talks to me about what he hopes for, how he plans to transcend the emergency nature of this election with a real vision of a future.
In person, Kenny is quite different from his media persona. The hamminess disappears and he becomes measured and almost understated.
This, he says, is a “peculiar” election, because it has been coming for nine months. Now, it is almost an anticlimax for people and this has created an odd mood.
He talks a bit about the debt crisis and his hopes that this can be dealt with within the embrace of the international community. He talks about the need for a new language to bring back in the disaffected and despairing in our society and above all engage the younger generations. His delivery is punctuated with anecdotes based on personal contacts, the source of his politics and philosophy.
Seemingly gratuitously, he reminds me that 2016 is almost upon us, that the next Dáil, if it runs the full course, will take us to the cusp of the 1916 centenary. His own birth date, he tells me, is April 24th, also the date on which the Rising began.
“In five years’ time, I want this country to be restored in the eyes of its people and the world, a nation to be proud of once again,” he says.
Six One News comes on. It says Fine Gael’s support has increased by two points. There is a minor outburst of clapping but Enda merely smiles as though not quite able to believe he’s not dreaming.