`Tone and Davis lead you though your task be hard, de Valera leads you soldiers of the legion of the rearguard.'
Seventy-five years to the day, it is difficult to recall the circumstances of the formation of Fianna Fail. While there are some who are alive and remember the meeting at the La Scala Theatre in 1926, few, if any, with an intimate knowledge of the transactions involved remain alive.
The formation of a new party in 1926 led to the political expansion of Fianna Fail as a practical republican party permeated with the 1916 ideals but committed to an advance based on democratic political method. More than any other political force, Fianna Fail has shaped this nation and State ever since.
Eamon de Valera had led the independence movement during the epic years from 1916 to 1921. Despite the terrible divisions caused by civil strife, de Valera was seen at home and abroad as the living embodiment of Irish nationality. With roots deep in rural Ireland and the emigrant community in the United States, and the sole surviving commandant of the 1916 Rising, de Valera struck an emotional chord with countless Irish men and women.
Sean Lemass was his indispensable assistant in the formation of the party. De Valera wished the party to be known simply as Fianna Fail, with all the ambiguity that description evokes in Celtic legend. At the insistance of Lemass, the party was known also as the Republican Party.
The IRA veteran of a Dublin Parnellite background had his own view about the political direction of this new organisation. From the start, Fianna Fail was very much a joint venture between de Valera and Lemass. When the founders of Fianna Fail gathered in the La Scala Theatre many of them had experienced the disillusionment of a civil war, imprisonment for political purposes and the domination of a political class whose social atmosphere was back to normal, back to business and back to the traditional pattern of a late 19th century Ireland dominated by clerical and agricultural interests.
Patriotic men and women, many of whom had expected to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country, resolved to begin again a new national and social struggle.
Many of the founders were part and parcel of the national struggle for independence. De Valera had entered Irish public life as the sole surviving commandant of the Easter Rising. Sean Lemass, Frank Aiken, Sean MacEntee, Countess Markiewicz, Oscar Traynor, Sean Moylan and many of the founding members were among the brave men and women who fought against overwhelming odds to establish the Irish people's right to self-determination.
The military background of many of the founding fathers imparted to the new organisation a ruthless pragmatism and an organisational efficiency the party has never lost. The ideals of the men and women of Easter week were set out in their manifesto: the Proclamation. The core idea of the 1916 Proclamation was national self-determination. Ten years later, Fianna Fail was established as a constitutional republican party to give effect to the aims of this proclamation.
At the party's inaugural meeting, on May 16th, 1926, Eamon de Valera said the aim of the party was the reuniting of the Irish people in the pursuit not only of national freedom, but of social and economic progress for all our citizens. On taking office in 1932, de Valera severed, one by one, the bonds which tied the State to the British empire. By the Constitution of 1937 he ensured that the Irish people in the greater part of this island exercised the right of self-determination and adopted a free constitution for a free people.
In the Downing Street Declaration the United Kingdom government recognised the right of the Irish people as a whole to self-determination subject to the important qualification that the practical exercise of that right in relation to Northern Ireland is qualified by unionist consent.
The Downing Street Declaration, the subsequent truce and the Good Friday agreement stand as the outstanding legacy of Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern. The resulting Good Friday agreement was ratified by the Irish people, North and South, in a collective act of self-determination.
The national question has always been a passionate concern in our political movement. This, above all other matters, was and is a fundamental for our party. Much of the distress and division caused by the controversial Arms Trial in 1970 stems from the fundamental character of this issue in our party identity.
The democratic political objective of a united Ireland is at the heart of our perspective. Our immediate focus has been to establish an agreed Ireland between all the people that share this island. In the 1937 Constitution and in the Good Friday agreement we have laid down enduring foundations for freedom and justice for all the people of this island.
The 1916 Proclamation formulated social aims which, in substance, called for the establishment of a classless Ireland. It was the Fianna Fail governments of the 1930s that took the first decisive steps towards a welfare state and industralisation. It was Fianna Fail that cleared the slums with social housing programmes and built a public health service. Later, it was Fianna Fail that provided for universal, free secondary education for the first time and did much to improve conditions for the elderly.
Sean Lemass once described Fianna Fail as the real Labour party, and fostered strong ties with the trade union movement. De Valera recalled the dark days of the second World War as his most arduous period in public life. By our neutrality we preserved our people and our independence from the peril of global war. By our subsequent entry into the European Union we have participated in a modern Europe where the ravage of small nations by greater ones is unthinkable.
It must be remembered that de Valera adopted the policy of neutrality after the failure of the League of Nations. He never believed neutrality as a policy should be an end in itself. Fianna Fail international policy has always favoured full participation in the United Nations and European Union. It was Jack Lynch who led this State into the Common Market and the country has benefited ever since. Lynch saw the potential of European free trade and free markets to transform the economic fortunes of this country. We now stand on the verge of a European trade bloc of 27 countries with a market of over 500 million people. It is of crucial importance that we endorse the Nice Treaty in the June 7th referendum. We must extend to the nations of Eastern Europe the same opportunity of admission to the wider European family.
Fianna Fail has provided the political vision for the economic renaissance that has utterly transformed this country. From 1987 the hard decisions and the daring choices that have made this country a success were made.
Charles Haughey has been the cynosure of much Irish public comment for four decades. Irrespective of any final conclusion, history will record his contribution to that economic renaissance. But, for all the material gains of recent times, we must keep our eyes on higher purposes.
De Valera always attached importance to the cultural significance of the Irish language: Ta an teanga beo fos i dtus milaois nua. Changing patterns of allegiance in Northern Ireland will demand of the next generation of Fianna Fail even greater sophistication in reconciling the people on this island.
Above all, our increased wealth demands we ensure that all share in this wealth through a classless as well as a united and Irish Ireland.
Brian Lenihan is a Fianna Fail TD for Dublin West
In The Irish Times Magazine on Saturday, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, talks to Alison O'Connor to mark Fianna Fail's 75th anniversary