Colm Tóibínreviews Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s By Diarmaid Ferriter, Profile, 823pp £30
Ireland in the 1970s was a great country to emigrate from. As the debate about joining the European Economic Community raged, I saw a poster put up by Official Sinn Féin opposing membership. “Would you like your daughter to work in the Ruhr Valley?” it asked. I had no daughter, but I remember thinking that if anyone were willing to pay for a single ticket to the Ruhr Valley I would be only too happy to stay there for as long as I was let.
Diarmaid Ferriter’s history of the decade, which is painstaking in its use of primary sources and filled with nuanced consideration of detail, makes clear, however, that such an attitude was too simple and not based on the evidence. The picture he offers is of a society slowly changing, with leaders who were, while uninspired and oddly flawed, also well meaning and serious minded, and civil servants who were dutiful and hard working. He is careful also to look at other material as the margins in Ireland became more influential; he studies the work of women’s groups and community groups and individuals who sought to create a new agenda for the country.
Ferriter can write about the 1970s as the State documents, for the most part, are available under a 30-year rule. He is scrupulous in how he assembles his narrative, using internal reports, debates as they unfolded and sources such as Hibernia and Magill magazines. He depends on contemporary documentary evidence and in doing so offers a masterclass in historical writing.
He does not use memoirs for accounts of important events or interviews conducted with those from the period who are still alive. He is interested in the texture of things on the day before the next thing happened, when no one knew what was coming. He is concerned with what things looked like then; he does not impose a pattern or allow hindsight to colour, or indeed deform, his version of the recent past. Thus history is written by a historian rather than by the victors or by those who lived to tell the tale.
This means there is, by necessity, much emphasis on the machinery of the State itself and on its internal debates on policy, as that evidence is available; there is much less about some of the other forces at work in our society. The IRA, for example, has little more than a shadowy and menacing presence in this book, and the Catholic Church, which has not released documents about controversies or about internal debates between key members, cannot be dealt with in any real detail.
Ferriter is also scrupulous not to highlight events merely because they echo with the present. Obviously, the reader will find some of the debates and burning issues from the 1970s highly relevant, but it is not the historian’s job to point this out or dwell on it. Ferriter does not allow easy connections to interfere with the intellectual austerity and clarity of tone he brings to his investigations.
Subtle but forceful
Because his book refrains from colourful pen portraits or sweeping statements or passages of knowing analysis, certain figures emerge in ways which are subtle and gradual, but all the more forceful for that. It would have been easy to have devoted large attention to, say, Garret FitzGerald, Charles Haughey and Conor Cruise O’Brien because of the power of their personalities. Instead, the three politicians who emerge as most interesting and admirable from these pages – Jack Lynch, Liam Cosgrave and Frank Cluskey – do so because of the persistent refusal of the first two to do their worst, or to cause damage, or to impose their personalities on events, and because of the ability of Cluskey, who was a mere parliamentary secretary – a junior minister in today’s parlance – to implement progressive policies on social welfare quietly when no one else seemed to be looking, when the bright boys in the cabinet were busy making noisy headlines.
The importance of Ferriter’s book is not merely in its methodology, however. The significance of his version of the 1970s also comes from an odd and fascinating dichotomy in his narrative. Some of the events and debates he describes seem very remote, part of another century. Some events and questions, on the other hand, loom large because we live with their shadow still, or indeed their substance. Matters that deformed our society in the 1970s, or seemed intractable or in urgent need of attention, still do so.
Thus some of the chapters on the quality of governance in Ireland and the systems of decisionmaking may be written again when someone comes to write the history of our decade, except not in as much detail since our rulers are much more wary of what they put on paper because of the Freedom of Information Act, and because emails will not be kept in the same way as memos once were.
Debates about whether to televise the Dáil, or whether to have an ombudsman, or whether the availability of contraceptives or the use of seat belts in cars was a good idea, seem like history. Garda brutality in the south – chillingly described here – or efforts to solve the problems in Northern Ireland also belong to their time.
Political life, too, in some of its aspects seems to belong to a closed past. When Paul Connaughton was elected to the Senate in 1977, for example, he remembered: “There were six of us in one room and one phone between us . . . For most of the queries to government departments, the writing was in longhand.” But in the opening section in the book, as Ferriter takes us through the nature of Irish politics in the 1970s – especially the relationship between the Dáil and the cabinet, or between the politicians and the people – and quotes those who wanted change, it is disturbing to see how little has been done, how little has, in fact, changed. In 1971 John Kelly spoke of the Dáil as “a ghost parliament”; in 1975 Barry Desmond wrote that “successive Fianna Fáil cabinets regarded the Dáil and the Seanad as wearisome intrusions into the routine of implementing cabinet and departmental decisions, the two areas of real parliamentary power”.
In these same years the young John Bruton was urging the reform of parliamentary institutions, “emphasising the need for the Dáil to have much greater control over public expenditure”. Sometimes the echoes between then and now make you laugh out loud. In 1973, for example, Declan Costello, the attorney general, suggested that “reform of the Senate electoral system was necessary”. Three years earlier John Horgan had said that “the chief and only justification for retaining the Senate is because it’s there”. In 1974 Patrick Donegan, minister for defence, described the Senate as “a place or state of punishment where I must suffer until I returned to the Dáil”.
There are times indeed when the echoes make you howl. A report in 1974 into the intermediate examination suggested that more school-based continuous assessment was needed. Its uniform targets were not suitable for many, Ferriter writes, quoting the report, which said the exam was “of little practical use to the majority of successful candidates . . . It samples a narrow range of skills [and] discourages innovation and curriculum development.”
He cites also the report commissioned in 1971 by Bobby Molloy into the price of building land. It was produced by Mr Justice Kenny in 1974 and “recommended that development land should be compulsorily acquired by local authorities at a 25 per cent premium above its existing use value, and that a register of property sale prices be established”.
Runaway spending
Ferriter also traces the problems of public spending versus income in the 1970s. He quotes a letter from September 1974 written by TK Whitaker, as governor of the Central Bank, to Richie Ryan, the minister for finance: “I make the envisaged increase in current public expenditure in 1975 about 25 per cent. I wrote in dismay last March . . . that effective management of our financial affairs seemed to be slipping out of our hands.”
Ryan made efforts to rein in the spending of his cabinet colleagues. The following August Ryan wrote to the taoiseach: “The department of local government . . . seems to feel that it can go its own merry way in expenditure. They have chosen to ignore completely the several pleas from this department, and indeed, the decisions of the government regarding expenditure.” Garret FitzGerald also wanted more money for the department of foreign affairs. By the end of 1975 Ryan concluded that his biggest problem was “the refusal of ministers and of the government collectively to operate the existing systems properly”.
By 1976 Brendan Corish, the minister for health, had joined the rogues’ gallery. Ryan wrote that he “did not take steps to bring about even the minimum policy changes to keep within his approved allocation”. Soon Michael O’Leary, the minister for labour, joined in the fun by introducing a new bank holiday, at the end of October, without consulting his cabinet colleagues.
Both the department of the taoiseach and the minister for finance seemed oddly powerless as public spending increased. Ryan stressed that “public expenditure and its growth is now probably the most serious problem facing the government with increases in debt service and public service pay alone estimated to absorb some 94 per cent of the increase in tax revenue in 1976”. With a top marginal tax rate of 77 per cent, and a tax threshold by far the lowest in the EEC, Ireland also had the highest level of government borrowing, at 11.5 per cent of GNP in 1976 and 1977. Unemployment was more than 100,000.
Ferriter describes a system of ordering the public finances that was seriously out of control. While this description comes late in the book, if read in tandem with an early chapter about the ineffectiveness of the Dáil it is clear that urgent reform was needed in the 1970s of how decisions were made and how implementation of policy was supervised.
The book takes us through many strands in Irish life in this decade, from the wave of strikes to the extraordinary success of the GAA as it expanded, to energy policy, to farmers and tax, to tax marches, to the smoking lobby and the beginning of an anti-smoking campaign, to population growth and the increase in women’s rights, to debates over emigrants’ rights, to large bank profits, to tensions between the government and the president, to the problems politicians under the influence of alcohol could cause, to the hospital consultants negotiating with skill and receiving “state salaries and the right to unlimited private practice in or outside public hospitals”, to Wood Quay, to the Offences against the State Act, to the kidnapping of Dr Herrema, among many other matters. In each instance Ferriter offers documentary evidence, much of which has not seen the light of day before, coupled with judicious and careful analysis.
There is one section of the book that may change our view of one aspect of Ireland after 1973 and help to explain our current dilemma. Thus it is worthwhile not only as a piece of historical writing but also as something that shows us the value of releasing documents after 30 years and the value, indeed, of having trained historians ready to sift through complex archival material. This is the section on Ireland’s accession to the EEC and its aftermath.
Once again it is TK Whitaker who issued the first warning, when he wrote to the minister for finance in 1962: “Nobody so loves us as to want us in the EEC on our own terms.” When we had joined the EEC, Ferriter writes, “concern was . . . expressed – and this was something repeatedly aired from an early stage – about a ‘two tier’ Europe and a feeling, as [secretary of the department of foreign affairs, Paul] Keating concluded that ‘we would not get something for nothing’ ”.
In 1976 Walter Kirwan, of the department of the taoiseach, suggested that a new realism was necessary in our seeking aid from the richer countries in Europe, as “the better off countries will not be prepared to make the massive transfers of resources required for a full economic and monetary union without being in a position to influence in some significant way the economic policies of the recipient countries”.
The next stage in the development of the community, he suggested, would involve a “considerable surrender of national sovereignty” by members. In 1978 Jack Lynch noted that “he felt many countries [in the EEC] were reverting to strongly nationalistic stances on many issues”.
Much to protect, much to fear
EEC membership worked for farmers in Ireland. Between 1973 and 1979 Ireland received £1 billion in payments under the common agricultural policy, compared to £179 million in “other main sources of direct community funding”. Agricultural export earnings rose 450 per cent between 1970 and 1979. This meant that the Irish government had much to protect and much to fear from possible enlargement of the community. But it also had to be careful about opposing the inevitable for purely selfish reasons. Thus it managed to maintain within its walls opposing views on the question of enlargement. Ireland became a good European and a selfish one all at the same time.
One senior civil servant in 1977 suggested an approach that was perhaps the most useful: “Our fundamental approach in Brussels should be that we are the poorest country in the EEC.” Joe Holloway, the secretary of the department of industry and commerce, suggested it be impressed on Irish civil servants going to Brussels that “they should look after the national interest”. Even then there was worry about losing out to Spain. The briefing note for the Irish side during a visit by the Spanish prime minister in 1977 said: “Clearly the bigger Spain’s hypothetical share the more difficult it would be for us to get a substantial share.”
The assessment of what Ireland should do about the possible enlargement of the EEC, written by Kevin Jordan, of the department of industry and commerce, in 1978, must send hollow echoes down the corridors of power: “Free money under any other name, of course, presupposes a benefactor; in current circumstances this can only be the Federal Republic of Germany.” By opposing the entry of Greece, Portugal and Spain, and doing so in vain, Ireland would be relegated, Jordan wrote, to “a lower tier” with those three very countries, “they with community aid and goodwill and we with none . . . We might even suffer the indignity [of being told to] put our house in order before looking for charity from others.”
For the bringing to light of our early fraught, ambiguous and uneasy relationship to our masters in Europe, and for offering a context for many other matters of public interest, Ambiguous Republic: Ireland in the 1970s will provide us with much to ponder in the long nights after Samhain. This is an invaluable and fascinating book.
