CAN it be that a full half decade has passed since John Kelly died? Students of politics today will hardly have heard of him and so cannot know what a joy his acerbic honesty and corrosive humour was within the drab culture of party whips and the party line to which Dail Eireann has been reduced.
The party whip remains both a main ingredient of political life in Ireland, and a major foe of democracy. Governments largely respond, not to the constituents who ultimately elected them, but to the single issue pressure groups such as the IFA or SIPTU which are so powerful a determinant in the formation of law and policy.
The notional defender of the public is the public representative. Yet we all know that, though our TD might express himself or, by love, herself thoroughly concerned about our particular predicament, when it comes to imposition of party policy through elected representatives, the elected representatives are representatives not of the people they purport to represent but of the party to which they belong.
Rigidly Honest
Now. Where was I? John Kelly. Despite the foregoing, what I liked about him was that he didn't care about all that. He didn't pretend to be a constituency politician. He was rigidly honest about his duty, which was to represent his constituents in a forensic fashion within the forum of similarly elected representatives. He held no clinics promised no favours secured no planning permissions slapped no palms and did not even feel obliged to know his constituents' names though no doubt he managed a polite, slightly sheepish, gosh rather pleased to meet you smile whenever he did meet them.
I regret enormously never knowing him. I am seldom in Dail Eireann, and when he was a Professor of Law in UCD, I could fairly say that if we were sworn but distant enemies, it was I who did the swearing. In those days, I was a lefty, and John seemed to be a stern rightwinger. Or rather, according to my sub Marxist (blessed heaven I was never a Marxist, so that is one heresy I do not have to recant) world of stereotypes, he was a reactionary. And no doubt an imperialist fascist running dog too.
In as much as he might have bad an opinion on me which I doubt he probably thought I was a tiresome late adolescent with too many hormones, too many causes and not enough common sense to keep a cat, alive in a mousery.
He was, I recall, meant to sit in some sort of Star Chamber gathered to contemplate some alleged misdemeanour of mine (entirely innocent, as it happens, me lud) from which I expected to be expelled to the Roscommon lead mines in shackles, crooning a chain gang lament with other political prisoners, exiled for our beliefs by the imperialist tyrants and CIA lackeys running Ireland.
But he didn't turn up and all that happened to me was a rather admonitory finger in the shape of a rude letter. Yet he remained for years afterwards a sinister figure of right wing opinions that he might be what he actually was, a thoroughly honest man, did not then strike me.
Traduced And Vilified
We see now his judgments were in fact extraordinarily prescient. One remark which drew much ire was his observation that State services were growing so much that the sow was being eaten by her farrow. He was traduced and vilified for that yet we know in retrospect be was absolutely right.
A potentially terminal illness bad entered Irish political life. Its primary symptom was the belief that the State had infinite resources, and that all unemployment could be ended by the Government creating jobs 1,000 jobs in a hospital here, 2,000 jobs in the post office. More pay for public servants? Absolutely. Longer holidays? No problem. A few extra grace days for civil servants? Here have a half dozen.
That economic lunacy reached its political apotheosis in the tax demonstrations 16 years ago, during the strike. The PAYE sector was marching for lower taxes the post office workers, in a low productivity, state subsidised industry, were simultaneously marching for more money. As the two groups met, we cheered one another.
Idiocy. Sheer idiocy
John Kelly should have sat us down on his knee, one by one, and, using our fingers to count with, have taught us a few lessons. He was right. The sow was being eaten by the farrow and what was worse, the farrow were getting cross with the sow.
Fundamentally Decent
Increasingly I paid attention to his words they were wise and funny and fundamentally decent. In my youth I had concealed him beneath stereotypes. Questions remained. I could not see and cannot see now how he could have remained in Government when Liam Cosgrave voted against his own contraception Bill. And I do not understand how he and others could have stood by Paddy Donegan when the latter accused the President, the late Cearbhall O Dalaigh, in the company of serving Army officers, not of being a thundering disgrace, which was the laundered version that appeared in the press, but of being a "f.... bollocks and a thundering disgrace".
He should have been sacked.
The outcome was the resignation of the president. It was an ignoble hour for Irish democracy.
John stayed loyal to the government as indeed did others. I don't understand why. I never asked him about it because I never knew him, always assuming that one day I would do. After all, be was still relatively young, abstemious, fit looking.
One day five years ago, I learned that I would in fact never know him. Even now, I deeply regret that.
Fine Gael will be hosting a lunch in his honour at Jurys this coming Friday. It would be an honour to honour him but a greater honour to have known him.