Rush to judge Cowen government misses full picture

Hindsight may well have coloured the views and recollections of former ministers

‘THE TRUTH is that the party was suffering from what would now be seen as post-traumatic stress and it was in a time warp. It had come through the . . . crisis . . . and the inevitable recriminations. Senior members had started laying the foundations on which they would construct their version of what happened. In doing so they were also creating the fissures that would eventually widen and split the party . . .”

The above could well be an assessment of what has been going on within Fianna Fáil in recent months culminating in the intra-party skirmishes reflected in last Monday night’s RTÉ documentary on the Cowen government.

The quote is in fact an account of the Fianna Fáil situation in early 1974. The assessment was authored by Frank Dunlop who had just taken up the post of party press officer. It was his view on the mood of the party, at least at parliamentary party level, in the wake of its defeat in the 1973 general election and the convulsions of the arms trial and its aftermath.

One of the party’s most senior parliamentarians at the time, Pádraig Faulkner, offers a similar assessment in his memoirs. He tells of how in 1973, after 16 years in power, Fianna Fáil ministers who had been household names and enjoyed the full glare of media attention found that, in opposition, they had suddenly disappeared from public view.

He speaks too of how the Fianna Fáil organisation found it almost impossible to cope with the new situation, how party morale plummeted and headquarters was inundated with complaints about the inactivity of the new front bench. Party grassroots accused Faulkner and his colleagues of failing to get publicity and letting the government away with everything. Faulkner says it took “quite some time to make our people accept the reality of political life”.

The only occasion prior to 1973 when Fianna Fáil went into opposition after several terms in government was 1948. At that stage the party was equally disoriented but had the comfort of blaming others for their loss. While there was the same trauma of losing power there was none of the internal recriminations which emerged in 1973 or have emerged since last February.

In 1948 the overriding feeling in the party was of being hard done by. A narrative quickly formed that they were ganged up on; the party comforted itself with the explanation that it lost power only because of the newly introduced coalition quirk in the political system.

The 1948 and 1973 scenarios are only partial precedents for the situation in which Fianna Fáil finds itself today. The scale of the collapse the party sustained last February means that most of the formerly senior politicians arguing over who did what, when and how are now outside the Dáil.

There were no documentary series in 1973 or 1974 dealing with events of that period and television technology had no role in covering the events of 1948. This time however the ruins of the Cowen government are already being systematically raked over.

Seeking to draft even an initial history of such dramatic events so early comes with particular risks. Many came to judgments on the actions of the Cowen government in real time, the majority of them unfavourable.

Monday night’s programme added little in the sense that none of the commentators offered a view different from that to which they gave vent during the life of the government itself.

What Matt Cooper or Shane Ross had to say about the Cowen government even with the passage of time was never going to be a surprise to anyone. Similarly with David McWilliams: although it was interesting to see him seek now to clarify that the manner in which the bank guarantee introduced by the government, with which he was so happy to be identified as co-author at the time, differed from that which he says was his actual proposal.

The most dramatic developments in the programme were the recorded interviews with five former ministers of that government: Micheál Martin, Pat Carey, Mary Hanafin, Willie O’Dea and John Gormley.

These interviews were conducted variously between April and July of this year. There was a sense from the interview clips of an editorial emphasis on any criticism of Cowen himself, although this was balanced to some extent by contributions from John Moloney and Barry Cowen.

The clips from the former ministers also focused on what they had to say about the night of the bank guarantee. All were consulted by telephone as part of the incorporeal cabinet meeting that night. Their contention now that the decision was rushed is not news.

Apart from that one got the sense that the extent to which some of them claimed they had reservations at the time owes more to hindsight than accurate recollection. The attempts at distancing which O'Dea embarked on were similar to those he made in the Sunday Independentlast spring when he was seeking to become the party's finance spokesman in opposition.

If he or other colleagues had such strong reservations that night they could, and should, have insisted on further cabinet deliberations. While the proposal to give the guarantee was announced in the early hours of that morning, the legislative process and fine-tuning took several days and even weeks to finalise.

Seeking to chronicle the history of events, especially events as dramatic as the last three years in Irish politics, so soon after their occurrence inevitably comes with risks. Those who rush on to the record are often those furthest from events or those most anxious to shape the history in their own favour. It will take decades, full access to documentary records and an assessment of the accounts of the primary operators before we can come to a complete picture of some of these events.