IT WAS Democratic Left day at the Four Courts. Almost every well-known name in the party was on hand to show solidarity with their leader, including Ministers of State Pat Rabbitte, Liz McManus and Eamon Gilmore, backbench TDs Eric Byrne and Kathleen Lynch, and Senator Joe Sherlock.
Proinsias De Rossa had come to the High Court seeking redress for an article written by Eamon Dunphy in the Sunday Independent on December 13th, 1992. The case could attract the greatest public interest of any libel action since the poet Patrick Kavanagh sued the Leader in the 1950s.
The morning was consumed with legal argument but it was standing-room only when the case proper began before the jury in the afternoon. Faces in the crowd included the Louth Fine Gael TD, Mr Brendan McGahon, and Mr De Rossa's former constituency colleague, Mr James Tunney of Fianna Fail.
The opening address to the jury by Mr Adrian Hardiman SC, acting for Mr De Rossa, lasted nearly an hour-and-a-half. He told them that a "powerful newspaper" with a readership of over a million people had associated Mr De Rossa's name with "a litany of truly horrible crimes
Mr Hardiman traced Mr De Rossa's political career from his days as a teenage internee in the 1950s up to the present, where he is one of the three party leaders in the Coalition. He compared the evolution of the Workers' Party and DL under Mr De Rossa's leadership to Tony Blair's transformation of the British Labour Party.
Concluding his guided tour of left-wing politics over the past 25 years, Mr Hardiman compared Mr De Rossa's departure from the Workers' Party and the decision to set up Democratic Left to Eamon de Valera's split with Sinn Fein and the founding of Fianna Fail.
Within nine months, Mr De Rossa was in negotiations to form a government. But, at this precise time, October 1992, the text of what Mr Hardiman categorically stated was a "forged letter" was published in The Irish Times. The letter purported to be an appeal in 1986 for a million pounds to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from the then Workers' Party leaders, including Mr De Rossa, because the WP could no longer rely on "special activities" to raise funds.
There was another historical echo when he said Mr De Rossa was "not the first Irish political leader to be bedevilled by a forged letter".
At this point Mr Hardiman arranged for broadsheet-sized photocopies of the Dunphy article to be distributed to the jury. He claimed the reference to "special activities" in the article could only have come from the Moscow letter and these activities consisted of the "worst sort of crimes one can imagine". Counsel held up the article like a map, pointing out its objectionable parts.
He asserted that the Sunday Independent was not, in fact, standing over what it had published but had come to court, "like a delinquent schoolboy who is asked by the teacher what he has in his hand and says nothing'".
Then it was Mr De Rossa's turn, affirming rather than swearing on the Bible. He was questioned from his own side by Mr Paul O'Higgins SC, who brought him through the early part of his life. At school, the future DL leader was obliged to learn Robert Emmet's courtroom speech off by heart.
He will be on the witness stand again today when the Independent Newspapers team led by Mr Patrick MacEntee SC and Mr Kevin Feeney SC will get a chance to put their questions.