Saturday, September 20, 2008
THE Progressive Democrats were suggesting this week that they are going to fold up their tent and fade away.
They began in 1985, promising to break the mould in Irish politics. It is a bit too soon to evaluate their overall contribution, but they certainly made their presence felt.
The party was founded after the expulsion of Des O’Malley from Fianna Fáil. Keeping Charlie Haughey out of power seemed to be its primary aim initially. They failed at the first hurdle, but that was through no fault of their own.
The party did magnificently its first time out, winning 14 seats in the general election of 1987. They undoubtedly denied Haughey an overall majority, but he was able to form a minority government. He called a snap election in 1989 in a naked attempt to win the elusive overall majority. The PDs fared poorly, losing a majority of their seats, but the six they retained was just enough to form a majority coalition with Fianna Fáil.
O’Malley propped up Haughey’s last government for the next two and a half years. In this they broke the mould. It was the first time that Fianna Fáil went into coalition, and the PD tail wagged so hard that vital parts of the Fianna Fáil dog began to come off.
In 1990 when Brian Lenihan suffered from that regular Fianna Fáil malady — a spectacular loss of memory — the PDs forced Haughey to dump him as Tánaiste. When the Short Fellow tried to replace him with Jim McDaid, the PDs forced poor Jim out, because he had been witless enough to be photographed with some Provos outside the Four Courts.
The upheaval within Fianna Fáil was so great that Albert Reynolds and P Flynn were soon thrown out of cabinet. But the PD’s biggest coup was in forcing Haughey out as Taoiseach in 1992. Later the same year they pulled the plug on the government of Albert Reynolds.
Traditionally, the small party in a coalition has lost seats at the next election. There had been four previous coalition governments. In 1951 Clann na Poblachta lost seven of its 10 seats, and Labour lost three of its 16 seats, while in 1957, Labour party lost seven of its 19 seats.
In 1977 Labour lost two of its 19 seats, but when the coalition collapsed in February 1982, Labour actually retained its 15 seats.
The minor party in a coalition had never actually gained seats until 1992 when the PDs gained four seats to bring their tally to 10.
That year it was Labour’s turn to prop up a coalition, but Labour fared dismally at the next election, dropping 16 of its 33 seats. The curse of the coalition had struck again.
The PDs had only four seats when it got back into coalition in 1997, but they again bucked the trend at the next election in 2002.
They not only repeated their feat of being the first and only minor party to gain seats while in coalition, they were actually part of the first coalition in Irish history to be re-elected.
The 2002 election was a phenomenal result for the PDs. Many pundits were writing them off.
Just before the general election the party lost one of its founding stalwarts, Bobby Molloy, in extraordinary circumstances. He had made improper representations to a judge on behalf of a constituent awaiting sentencing for incestuous rape.
The PDs were further hurt by pathetic efforts to defend Molloy’s indefensible behaviour.
Senator John Dardis and John Higgins, the party’s General Secretary, decried the behaviour of political opponents by contending that the PDs never went hunting for heads. This was absurd, because the PDs were the original political headhunters, having bagged the biggest heads in Irish politics.
Although Michael McDowell was elected to the Dáil on three occasions, he never managed to retain his seat, despite enjoying a high profile. First elected in 1987, he lost his seat in 1989, regained it in 1992, but lost it again in 1997, and then regained it in extraordinary circumstances in 2002, when he virtually saved the PDs single-handedly.
McDowell skilfully argued that Fianna Fáil should not be trusted with an overall majority. This seemed to strike the right note with the electorate, because the PDs actually doubled their seats.
While McDowell could be a bit of political boot boy, he did it with class. He was the politician that people loved to hate, because he could start an argument in an empty room. He had a tendency to come across as arrogant, insufferable, intemperate and intolerant of views other than his own. But he was never dull.
He absurdly compared Richard Bruton to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, but he had the good grace to apologise for that gaffe.
He accused Dick Spring in the Dáil of "being morally brain dead," and he plumbed the depths of insensitivity as Minister for Justice when he said that going to tell the widow of Jerry McCabe of the release of her husband’s killers would be "one of the happiest journeys I would have to make in my life."
He was equally insensitive in dismissing a family request for an inquiry into rumours of political collusion surrounding the murder of Garda Richard Fallon in 1970. It was widely suspected within the Special Branch that the man who shot Dick Fallon had been helped to escape the jurisdiction in the ministerial car of Neal Blaney. Moreover, one of those arrested for questioning in relation to the murder was Con Ahern, Bertie Ahern’s father.
McDowell had squabbles with the gardaí, prison officers, judiciary, legal colleagues, the opposition, his partners in government, and even with his own party. He essentially pushed Mary Harney aside to gain the leadership in 2006.
He made enemies easily, but he could be proud of some of those enemies. He was as courageous as he was outspoken. As Minister for Justice in 2004 he called gangland killings in Dublin "the sting of a dying wasp". He was intimating that gangland activity was coming to an end, but the remark would come back to haunt him when such killings reached a record number in 2006.
The pundits were confidently predicting that Sinn Féin was going to make significant gains in 2007, but McDowell bravely took them on and even his critics acknowledge that he probably did more than anybody to expose and undermine the Sinn Féin campaign. As a result Sinn Féin actually lost seats in that election.
McDowell tried to play the anti-Fianna Fáil card again in 2007, but this time he was challenged within PDs by Tom Parlon, who was anxious to ensure Fianna Fáil transfers.
Parlon would have done well to heed the old adage that those who do not hang together, will hang separately.
Both he and McDowell lost their seats in 2007.
The party had lost its head and now it is only a question of burying it along with the National League, Clann na Poblachta, Clann na Talmhan, Workers’ Party, Monetary Reform, Christian Democrats, and the Socialist Labour Party.
But, unlike many of those, the PDs have left their mark.
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