An aeon of Irish social, political and economic life has passed since Mary Robinson's election, writes JOHN WATERS
TWENTY YEARS ago, we were about to enter the final week of the election campaign that delivered Ireland’s first woman president. For those of us who were there, it seems a short time ago; and yet, from a different angle, a whole aeon of Irish social, political and economic life appears to have passed. We have been poor and rich and poor again. We have had five different taoisigh and a continuity of female presidencies. We have, you might say, experienced a sufficiency of what was promised at that time to evaluate not merely the promises that were made but also the nature of political promise itself and what politics is capable of delivering.
In the next couple of weeks, no doubt, we will be treated to many retrospective analyses of that pivotal moment in recent history, and perhaps this journalistic tendency for over-the-shoulder introspection will, for once, be beneficial. The past 20 years offers a substantial period in which to obtain some perspective on our collective affairs – a quality noticeably missing from many of our current endeavours to understand what is happening now.
It may be tempting, out of a desire to achieve harmony with the catastrophising of the present moment, to draw a comparison between 1990 and 2010 in a wholly negative manner. This is the “dream theory” of the Celtic Tiger, which depicts us, in 2008, waking up from a delusional dream of prosperity into which we drifted sometime early in the 1990s and remained until our rude awakening of approximately 30 months ago.
I hazarded this theory to a colleague during the week and he, very properly, pointed out that it was objective nonsense, since Irish living standards today are immeasurably better than they were when Mary Robinson was elected. It’s true: the vast majority of Irish people are better dressed, better fed, better educated and have access to far better infrastructure and communications than they did then.
Most people, for example, live in far superior accommodation to that of 1990: we may have had a housing bubble, but we also have better housing. My colleague drew a phantom graph on the wall of the corridor in which we were speaking, indicating the spike of the Celtic Tiger going into the stratosphere, but, underneath, another spike representing the true comparison between the economic facts of 2010 and those of 1990. (It is impossible, I realise, to make a point like this without appearing to be an apologist for the manner of our governance of the past two decades; but we should, in as far as possible, try to state the facts without worrying what the bloggers will spit back.)
On the other hand, while the “dream theory” of our recent fortunes may indeed be suspect, it has a certain truth in the sense that we have for two years now been caught up in a moment of post-awakening confusion, a mix of dismay at being torn from the dream and reluctance to venture out into a less promising reality.
November 1990 was an exciting time to be fairly young and at close quarters with the Irish political drama. The future seemed full of promise and potential. The promise was of “change”, a golden age of Irish life, probably heading in a leftward, liberal, more egalitarian and secular direction. Everything would be different, we promised ourselves, once we shook off the binds of our tribal and traditional past.
Some of this has incontrovertibly come to pass – the “secular” bit certainly. But any possibility of a leftward drift was intercepted by Fianna Fáil, which, having had its eye wiped in 1990, predictably stole everyone’s clothes, reclaiming the presidency with its own version of Mary Robinson and re-entering government just as the sun broke through.
The promise of equality was briefly delivered upon, but not in a way, had it been transparently presented, we might have deemed unambiguously prudent. A revolution in credit ensured a redistribution of debt rather than income, with all the consequences we can now observe. It is difficult to resist a wry smile at the memory that, just a short time before the presidential campaign, the Labour Party, in an effort to put its modernising credentials on display, had jettisoned its policy demanding the nationalisation of banks.
When you consider that so much of the rhetoric about “change” emanated from the political context, it is truly remarkable to observe how little that context itself remains unchanged since 1990. The leaders are different but, apart from Fianna Fáil, all political parties are dominated by the same generation as held the wheel in 1990. Of the main parties, only Fine Gael appears to have succeeded in incorporating any significant representation of the younger generation, and this has resulted in continuing tensions within that party.
The Labour Party, save for the integration and elevation of the Democratic Left contingent, comprises almost precisely the same personnel that plotted the election of Mary Robinson. Only the absence of Dick Spring gives the party an appearance of difference. Were he to return, Spring would still seem like the party’s sharpest blade.