Fergus Finlay: Two men who made their mark on this country and will be missed

The Labour Party lost two former general secretaries in the last few days, both of whom left an undeniable mark on his country, writes Fergus Finlay

Brendan Halligan: As a servant of the public in a variety of roles, he has, as the saying goes, done the State some service

I was in a radio studio on Sunday, with two young journalists. Both very bright. Both clued into how politics works and doesn’t work, and both, despite their youth, very savvy about media.

We were discussing the Sunday Independent’s acknowledgement last weekend of the way it had treated John Hume in the period before the major breakthrough in the peace process. 

One of the two young journalists was clearly very much aware of the campaign of self-indulgent abuse that had been visited on Hume in the early 1990s. 

“But”, she said, “I was seven then, and it’s hard to remember what that felt like if you hadn’t lived through it.” 

I could. I lived through 1993 and 1994, every single day of both those years, and I can remember them vividly as two of the most turbulent years in the entire history of Irish politics.

At the very start of 1993 Albert Reynolds and Dick Spring formed a coalition government. 

At the end of 1993, on the basis of work and inspiration by John Hume, the Downing Street Declaration was signed by Reynolds and John Major. 

I still have the first signed copy. Exactly a year to the day after he signed the Downing Street Declaration, Albert Reynold was replaced by John Bruton as Taoiseach.

From the start of 1993 to the end of 1994 we had triumph and scandal; peace-making and atrocities; high-stakes politics and reckless politics; trust and deep mistrust. 

As you might say, in those two years, there was never a dull moment. We shaped the future, and we barely survived the present.

And then later on Sunday, I discovered that Brendan Halligan had died. And my mind immediately went back further, to the 1960s and early 1970s, when I was still a teenager — and electrified by a single speech.

It was 1967, in Liberty Hall in Dublin. The leader of the Labour Party at the time was Brendan Corish, a tall, strikingly handsome man with a pronounced Wexford accent. He was popular with party members and with the electorate. 

He’d been leader about six or seven years, and had brought the party from 13 to 33 TDs, and to just over 15% of the popular vote.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think that anyone in Ireland had ever heard a political leader use the word “socialist” so often and so prominently in a single speech. I certainly hadn’t, and when I heard Corish begin with the words, “The 70s will be Socialist”, I was hooked.

Almost immediately he went on to say that he intended to offer the audience the vision of a new society — what he called (and what the speech became called) 'A New Republic'.

The New Republic speech of 1967, in its own way, was one of the turning points of Irish political history. 

Other revolutions were happening, in Europe and around the world. The anti-war movement in America, student revolt in France and Germany, the emergence of human rights as a global issue. 

Thanks to the vision of the New Republic, Ireland was in that mainstream.

And Labour. People flocked to join the party, and many of them were well-known public figures already. 

Socialism was no longer the dirty word it has been in Ireland, no longer (and never again) something to be feared by all right-thinking people. 

Labour itself, which had been a largely rural party — the party of poltroons, as someone unkindly characterised it — began to spread its wings, and despite all the ups and downs since, has never been less than a truly national party.

Brendan Halligan did all that. 

He was the principal architect of the speech and the realignment. For one brief shining moment, he and the leader he served loyally were able to offer a real and different version. 

The history of Ireland in the second half of the 20th century is a history of profound change, especially in terms of the opening of a society that had been barred and shuttered up to then. Brendan Halligan was one of its architects.

Although the high hopes and dreams generated by that speech weren’t realised (and some of us are now the living embodiment of the joke that instead of the 70s being socialist, the socialists are 70), it is I believe impossible to deny the importance of the speech and the moment that Brendan Halligan crafted.

Other things — the Northern Ireland troubles, principally — got in the way of that vision. But that cannot deny the fact that it was a real, transformative, moment of vision that still holds out great promise.

Brendan leaves other legacies behind him. 

As the founder of the Institute of Europeans Affairs, and as one of Ireland’s most committed European thinkers, he designed and cemented a place in European analysis and ideas that has served Ireland brilliantly. 

As a servant of the public in a variety of roles, he has, as the saying goes, done the State some service.

As a man, he was one of the great persuaders. It was impossible not to be charmed by Brendan when you met him. You might be determined to fight with him over something, but you always ended up agreeing with him.

But from a beginning in local community development through a lifetime in public and political activity, Brendan Halligan was one of Ireland’s leading political visionaries and thinkers. He left an undeniable mark on his country.

The Labour Party actually lost two former general secretaries in the last few days. 

We also lost Colm O’Briain, who served as Labour general secretary for two years in the 80s — two of the toughest years, when Labour was in government during a deep recession.

We nearly didn’t survive that, but after we rebuilt, Colm went on to help Michael D Higgins become the first (and outstandingly the best) minister for arts and culture we ever had.

Colm was an exciting personality and a genuine intellectual. He also had a great sense of fun and drama. 

He loved an argument, and could be ferocious in defence of a point of view. But he was one of those people from whom you never parted other than as a friend.

There’s a degree of humdrum slog in the job description of a general secretary for a political party, and I suspect that Colm didn’t enjoy that side of the job so much. 

Given any chance to get his teeth into an issue, though, he radiated energy and charisma. 

He was one of the founders of the Project Arts Centre, the first full-time director of the Arts Council, and had been a ground-breaking producer and director in RTÉ.

In all of those roles and throughout his active life, Colm was a leader. 

He shared with his predecessor Brendan Halligan a deep sense of vision of what was possible and the desire, as Jim Larkin put it, to “close the gap between what ought to be and what is”.

Two men with the invaluable gift of bringing others with them. Two men who left a lasting impression on everyone who worked with them. 

Two men who made their mark on their country. 

Two men who will be missed.