Kenny’s got the facts and tone wrong

LAST Sunday, at Béal na mBláth, Enda Kenny brought Vladimir Lenin to Ireland.

Addressing the gathering at the annual commemoration for Michael Collins, Kenny recorded that Lenin arrived on this island to check out how the minister for finance in the first Dáil was getting things done. The speech referenced Collins as “the outstanding organiser who brought Lenin himself to Ireland” to see how the National Loan worked.

Enda wasn’t clear on how exactly Collins brought the communist leader here. Did he go over and collect him? While not running a war and a department of finance, did Mick find time to scoot over to Russia on his fabled bicycle, collect Lenin, and give him a crosser back to Dublin?

It may well be that Kenny was getting his Lenins mixed up. In the 1960s, John Lennon was a frequent visitor to this island, and indeed expressed sympathy for the political struggle of the Irish to obtain freedom down all the days. Perhaps that’s where Enda went wrong. All these foreign names can sound the same.

Anybody can make a mistake, even a Taoiseach making a historical speech on a spot that is viewed as sacred to his tribe. By Wednesday, when the faux pas was getting great mileage in the media, Kenny’s spokesman came out with the Taoiseach’s hands up. “The script contained an inaccurate reference which was not picked up in advance”, the spokesman said.

Last July, in the wake of publication of the Murphy report, Kenny delivered an historic address to the Dáil on the role played by the Vatican in covering up clerical sex abuse.

Afterwards, with plaudits ringing in his ears, Kenny’s spokesman said that the Taoiseach was the chief architect of his own speeches. What was quietly ignored in most quarters was that that speech contained a serious allegation that had no basis in fact.

Kenny referred to “the Holy See attempting to frustrate an inquiry into a sovereign democratic republic as little as three years ago, not three decades ago”.

When challenged as to what he was referring, the word came back that it was nothing in particular. In other words, who cares about the facts once the speech was well received?

Again, it might be churlish to pick up on another, albeit important, mistake. The problem is that both instances point to a Taoiseach who, even on historic occasions, appears more inclined to say whatever suits his immediate political ends rather than acting as spokesman for the nation.

This may well be a symptom of a politician rooted in the base instinct of the tribal, or it may indicate that as a leader he’s making it up as he goes along.

Last Sunday’s effort was particularly depressing, saying more about Kenny than it did about the man whom they had all come to praise.

Michael Collins’s legend has grown with the decades. He was an extraordinary man, but he wasn’t a combination of James Bond, Mahatma Gandhi, and John Maynard Keynes, as he is sometimes portrayed.

He did have a vision of what he was fighting for, and what he wanted to see emerge in a new nation. In the days before his death, he did make strenuous efforts to reach across the Civil War divide to individuals such as Tom Barry.

Ninety years down the line, the man who — ludicrously — sees himself as inheritor of Collins’s political mantle couldn’t use the occasion to reach across the political divide and share the history of Collins with all traditions.

Kenny referred to Collins being “assassinated”. The reality is he was in uniform at the time of his death, engaged in the type of gun battle that was a feature of the Civil War.

There was nothing in Kenny’s speech about Brian Lenihan’s address at Béal na mBláth two years ago, a historic occasion organised by the estimable Dermot Collins, which attempted to brook a divide. In particular, there was no acknowledgement that the current Government is following the compass set down by Lenihan, more or less to a tee.

Referencing Collins’s brand of excellence, the Taoiseach said it involved “honesty, respect, ethics, passion, compassion, leadership, and responsibility”. And guess who he thinks is displaying those qualities to the nation? These attributes would be required “to re-evaluate, rehabilitate and re-establish at the hear of our government, our economy, and our society”.

In other words, the values espoused by Collins are being retrieved after being left battered and bruised by Fianna Fáil over the last decade. Maybe I’ve missed something, but has a great shift in the mores and values of this society happened since Kenny took over?

So, having cast the political descendants of de Valera as today’s bad guys, he wrapped Collins’s death flag around himself once more. The connection between Collins and Fine Gael has always been tenuous. In Aug 1922, there was no Fine Gael, and its forerunner Cumann na nGael was but a glint in WT Cosgrave’s eye. All accounts from the time suggest that Collins felt emotionally closer to those on the opposite side of the Civil War than he did with his colleagues in the makeshift cabinet. None of that has ever stopped the Blueshirts raising him to the top of their petard.

The tribal stuff might have been forgiven if Kenny’s speech bore some resemblance to the real world in which we now find ourselves. Here’s another rousing passage from a leader who wasn’t lost, but sounded like he was losing the run of himself.

“Just as Collins was undeterred by the dire financial straits in which Ireland found itself in the 1920s, the Government I lead is equally determined. I refuse to allow our economic difficulties to become a political excuse. An excuse not to change. An excuse not to restructure. An excuse not to reform.”

If he refuses to use the recession as an excuse not to do these things, then what exactly is his excuse? Because one thing is certain, there has been precious little change, not much restructuring, and reform has been consigned to a scrapheap.

Back in 2001, Bertie Ahern cynically used the reburial of ten men executed in the War of Independence for his political ends. The reburial took place on the completion of Fianna Fáil’s annual conference that year, and coincided with a fear in the party that Sinn Féin’s popularity was growing. The message being conveyed from the Government was clear — these were really Fianna Fáil men.

Just as Kenny last Sunday attempted to reinforce the notion that Collins was a Fine Gael man, that attributes and values which have been ascribed to him are those of the party, that Kenny was now wearing the shoes of the lost leader.

Political rhetoric and grave robbing dead patriots is well worn in Irish politics. Nothing has changed there. But the cynicism involved resonates even greater at a time when some of the values espoused by those men of long ago are crying out in the wilderness for attention.

In such a sorry state, and with so little to offer by way of imagination or innovation, the least a Taoiseach could do is get his facts right.