1980s REVISITED: PROFILES: From political turmoil to social upheaval, the 1980s were a time of huge change in Ireland. Gráinne Fallerasks six movers and shakers - and a glove puppet - what they recall about the decade that changed everything
GARRET FITZGERALD
Then: Dr Garret FitzGerald became leader of Fine Gael in 1977. In June 1981, he became taoiseach for the first time. The government collapsed in January of 1982 and Fine Gael found itself in opposition, only to regain power after a third general election that November. FitzGerald went on to lead the country until 1987 and retired from politics in 1992.
Now: Chancellor of the National University of Ireland and columnist withThe Irish Times.
'THE 1980s was a stressful period. There is a lot of fun in politics and there are funny moments but on the whole it was pretty tough going. While I enjoyed being minister for foreign affairs enormously, I could never say I enjoyed being taoiseach.
1981 A tough start: Before I had even formed the government - on the way back from Áras an Úachtaráin - I had been told by the secretary of the cabinet that we were in a major crisis. The country's finances were far worse than anybody thought they were. We needed to call an emergency cabinet meeting immediately and we had an emergency budget in three weeks. So that was a little bit of a shock.
We were also into the hunger strike and an attempt to resolve it was just going wrong. There were 27 communications between us and the British government in the following five weeks on the hunger strikes.
For the next 18 months, first of all, we had to bring in an emergency budget, then the actual budget which lost by one vote. Because of that, we had another election which put us in opposition, but then we got the government out again nine months later.
I rather enjoy elections, but having three in such a short space of time meant that it was a particularly stressful period.
1983 Abortion referendum: The abortion referendum was very difficult. Haughey produced a wording on the subject and I understood the Protestant archbishop favoured it. I didn't get enough advice on it before accepting it.
The wording turned out to be defective, dangerously so. I called the ministers together and explained to them that women could die and we had to change it. We knew the effect would be a Dáil defeat and damage to our support in the country, but nobody hesitated. That was the most moral decision ever taken by an Irish government.
On the day of the referendum, RTÉ had a van parked outside waiting to see which church I'd go to, to be denounced from the pulpit. At that stage my wife was having difficulty getting out and two friends of ours who were priests called to the house and said Mass for us. I left the van there all day. I didn't bother telling them that I wouldn't be going to church.
1985 The Anglo Irish Agreement: The hunger strikes and the way they had been handled by the British had hugely increased support for Sinn Féin.
The purpose of the Anglo-Irish Agreement was to persuade voters in Northern Ireland to swing back from Sinn Féin to the SDLP, so that Sinn Féin would realise that the armalite and the ballot box wouldn't work. We subsequently found out that Sinn Féin were very impressed by the agreement. Firstly, it did cut their support and they had to rethink and I think that, secondly, some of them realised that if I could get that from Margaret Thatcher, they could get something, too. So it was a turning point, but it took a very long time to turn.
I had a complex relationship with Margaret Thatcher, but in fact she liked me. She used to say to her civil servants, 'Do you think I'm doing this because I like Garret?' I always thought she actually enjoyed arguing with me.
1986 The divorce referendum:There was a huge campaign about property, telling farmers that their wives would take half the farm, and wives that they'd be thrown out of their homes, but we managed to turn it around. A quarter of the electorate changed their position in the space of three weeks.
The economy: We had brought things quite a distance. When we came into office, inflation was 21 per cent. When we left, it was down to three per cent.
At the beginning we were told that the level of borrowing for the year ahead would be 21.5 per cent of GDP, excluding the borrowings of State enterprises. We had done a lot but we had not been able to reduce current spending sufficiently and there was a further reduction needed in that.
1987 Leaving office:Because Haughey had been in denial about the crisis all along, my concern was that all the work we had done to get things as far as we could, would be wasted if he came in and didn't follow on from what we were doing.
I knew the person who could deal with that was Ray MacSharry, but he had been excluded from the front bench by Fianna Fáil for the period they were in opposition. I decided to have a four-week rather than a three-week election campaign to give MacSharry time to deal with Haughey. It worked. MacSharry did get on top of it and Haughey did decide to take action at last.
So we were absolutely exhausted after all that. Indeed, my portrait was painted then - it's in the Dáil - and it should have been left a while. I look awful in it.
I brought Charles Haughey up the stairs to have words as to how we'd hand over. He said, 'You had a terrible time. You had four major crises. One is enough for any government.' I never thought I'd get a sympathetic word from Charles Haughey."
RICHARD O'RAWE
Then: Having spent three years on the H-Block blanket protest, Richard O'Rawe was in the leadership wing, although not part of the leadership, when the IRA prisoners embarked on the first hunger strike in October 1980. After the collapse of that strike, Bobby Sands started a second hunger strike in March 1981. With Sands on hunger strike, Brendan "Bik" McFarlane became Officer Commanding (OC) and O'Rawe stepped into the position of PRO for the prisoners. He was 26 at the time.
Now: Author of Blanketmen, a controversial memoir of the hunger strikes published in 2005. O'Rawe is currently working on a novel.
'THE OC and the PRO were the two leading figures in the H-Blocks. That unfortunately meant that I, along with Bik McFarlane, had to pick who went on hunger strike and who didn't. That was done with absolute dispassion. It had to be . . . we were in it to win. This was not some sort of PR exercise.
The ultimate criteria on which we had to select was, will this fellow die if needs be? The whole thing was extremely stressful - I was devouring headache pills because I seemed to have a permanent headache all the time. These weren't photos on a wall to me. They were my comrades. They were my friends.
In what the hunger strike has become, people tend to forget that these were people who had real lives, who had families, who had futures. Bobby Sands was only 26 or 27. Some of the other lads were younger . . . some had kids. They had a lot to live for.
We more or less had it that the first four - Bobby Sands, Frank Hughes, Raymond McCreesh and Patsy O'Hara - would die.
My concern all the time was the fifth guy, Joe McDonnell. There was a difference of about eight to 10 weeks between Patsy O'Hara and Joe McDonnell. When Joe McDonnell died, you had crossed a Rubicon. You were virtually into a second hunger strike then.
As PRO, I was always conscious that outright victory was unlikely and that a compromise would have to be considered. The statement we issued on the Fourth of July was an attempt to bridge the chasm between us and the British.
It worked to the extent that we got a very solid offer from the British which had the potential to break the deadlock. But for whatever reason, the deadlock wasn't broken, and it wasn't because the prisoners didn't accept the offer, because we did. We accepted that deal and yet, having accepted that deal, six men went on to die.
It was chaotic. Disorganised chaos. It was an atrocious time to be in command in any sort of shape or form. By September 10th, men were dead but, Bik was for keeping it going. At one stage he said to me that he envisaged 33 people dying. That was where he was coming from. It ended on October 3rd, 1981, but Bik saw it going on until August of the next year . . . Adams sent the call in to stop and it did.
Afterwards, I couldn't understand why. Why 10? Why not just stop after Joe for that matter and spare the other five lives? I couldn't understand any of that. I was just angry, totally livid, infuriated. My anger hadn't translated into a precise analysis of what had actually happened because I was still too close to it. We had no appreciation of how Adams and the others thought on the outside in terms of what was happening politically.
I don't think you ever get over it. I buried that for so long, but it kept coming back. You'd see faces. The funny thing about it is that when you remember these guys, they're always smiling. You never think of them depressed. I don't know why that is.
I was in for another two years. I eventually resigned from the command structure and just did my time and got out. After getting out, I went straight back into Sinn Féin. Adams hired me as PRO and I also co-ordinated the movement's response to the supergrasses. We got that knocked on its head.
Then Bernie, my wife, gave me an ultimatum . . . I had only been married six months before being out of the home for six years in prison. I was lucky to have a wife to come out to and I had gone straight into a job with Sinn Féin that was 10, 12 hours a day, six days a week. She said, 'It's going to be either me and your child here, or it's going to be the movement, because I'm not going to have it.' I chose them.
The whole struggle wasn't as crystal clear as it had been for me in the early stages. Right and wrong weren't black and white anymore. Tactically, I didn't know where it was going and the waters were getting pretty murky. I didn't see that it was the same struggle anymore."
DOIREANN NÍ BHRIAIN
Then: Presenter of Women Today, an RTÉ radio and television programme that looked at issues from women's perspective.
Now: Arts consultant, broadcaster and radio producer.
'I SOMETIMES feel I almost have to defend the 1980s from this image that people have of them being dark and miserable times. I had enormous fun in the 1980s. Of course, that wasn't the case for everyone. I was a privileged middle-class woman, doing a good job with prospects, so I was in a much more fortunate position than many people.
In the late 1970s, I was presenting a radio programme called Women Today. In the early 1980s, Clare Duignan had the idea that it might make a good television programme. I co-presented with Marian Finucane. Nuala O'Faolain was a producer and Nell McCafferty worked with us as well. Looking back, that's a remarkable group of women to be working with, but we didn't know it at the time. We just got on very well and had great fun.
They were heady days. There had been a lot of change in that period. Women had become peripherally involved in organisations and politics in the 1970s, and in the 1980s they were becoming more directly involved.
There was a referendum on the rights of the unborn child in 1983. They were tense times, and we were on the national broadcaster, so we had to strike a careful balance in what we covered. It was difficult to do sometimes as emotions run very high at times like that.
Things had improved for women, of course, but in the 1980s, there were things that were the norm in more developed societies - equal employment rights, pay, property rights - that Irish women still hadn't achieved.
The thing about Women Today was that it wasn't just about women's rights and issues. It took a woman's perspective on the stories of the day, whatever they might have been. That hadn't really been done before. We set out to fill a gap in the coverage. There was a sense of responsibility that we felt doing the programme. We had the energy and belief that the world could be a better place.
As the 1980s went on, I made a decision that I really needed to get to know Northern Ireland, so I spent some time working in the RTÉ newsroom in Belfast. We made a couple of Women Today programmes in the North as well - one about the wives of supergrasses and another where we talked to Protestant women. I got to like the place hugely.
By the end of the decade, I was presenting a programme about books and I had had my two daughters. I suppose I was slightly more focused on domesticity by that stage.
Looking back on it with the benefit of hindsight, it seems that externally, a lot had changed by the end of the decade. Attitudes had become more tolerant and the power of the church was beginning to be questioned in a more robust way. It took another few years for the results of that openness to materialise. These things always take some time to trickle down. The child abuse allegations, for example, didn't surface until the 1990s, and look at what has since emerged in the tribunals. While we were opening up and people were beginning to talk about things and question things more in the 1980s, it's dreadful to think that these things were happening at that time and as a society we weren't yet ready or willing to hear about them."
KEVIN MORAN
Then: Soccer player with Manchester United, Sporting Gijon and the Republic of Ireland.
Now: Director of Proactive Sports Management
'I MADE my debut with Manchester United in 1978, but it was during the 1980s that I really became a part of the team. We won two FA cups in 1983 and 1985. We got to a Milk Cup final in 1983, which we lost to Liverpool, but it was still memorable and, of course, the European Championships in Stuttgart with Ireland in 1988 was a real high point as well.
The one disappointment about playing for Manchester United in the 1980s is that we never won the league. We always lost out to Everton or Liverpool. When you played football for a club as big as Manchester United, you were only there for the successes. In 1985, I became the first player ever to be sent off in an FA Cup final. People always ask about that, but it never bothered me afterwards, probably because we won the game. It would have been 20 times worse if we had lost.
There was a lot of trouble in football in the 1980s - lots of hooliganism and violence in the game. There were four awful tragedies that I remember. One in Ibrox happened in the 1970s, but then in 1985 there was the fire at Bradford as well as the riot in Heysel Stadium when Juventus was playing Liverpool. Then, of course, there was Hillsborough in 1989.
They were awful, tragic moments in football. It was a very turbulent time. You couldn't help but be affected as a player, to see all these people killed and hurt at matches. I mean it's a sport at the end of the day. The only good that came out of all that was the introduction of the rules and regulations about seating in stadiums and so on. At least it means it can never happen again.
I came back to Ireland quite a bit during the 1980s and I kept a close eye on Gaelic football. Dublin won in 1983 with a number of the players with whom I would have played when we won back in the 1970s. I think the likes of Brian Mullins and Tommy Drumm were still playing. The economy was much more depressed in Ireland than elsewhere. I remember thinking in the 1980s that property prices in Ireland were very low. They weren't seen as being low though. There was just so much ground for Ireland to make up I don't think that anyone ever thought we'd get the massive boost we needed to kick-start the economy.
I made my international debut in 1980. We had an excellent team at that point and I often wonder what would have happened if we had qualified for the World Cup in 1982. It was a close thing. We were in a very tough group and we were robbed in one or two of those games. In the end we lost out on goal difference.
When we did well in Stuttgart, that momentum really brought us forward and we qualified for Italia 1990 sort of on the back of that. I often wonder how we would have done if we had qualified for the World Cup in 1982. If we had started the journey then, who knows where that momentum would have brought us?"
LAINEY KEOGH
Then: Began her design business by knitting garments for friends. In the late 1980s, Marianne Gunn O'Connor, owner of Otokia boutique, began acting as Keogh's agent, heralding the beginning of her transition from homespun knitwear maker to international designer.
Now: Internationally celebrated knitwear designer.
'THE 1980s was a crazy, chaotic adventure with lots of rock'n'roll and new friends. I was working in medicine at the beginning of the decade and my sister was managing Windmill recording studios.
At the time, so many young Irish people were leaving the country. In the late 1970s, all of the friends with whom I had graduated had left. At that age your friends are everything and you just feel completely abandoned. While I found new friends and fell into this wonderful new life, it was tinged with sadness. We all knew people who left, who had to leave and who had no choice in the matter.
There was a great big tribe of us who all hung out. We made things happen for one another. If someone was having a gig, we'd all go. If a friend opened a club, we all went. My design business evolved very naturally in that atmosphere. I started making things for friends. 'I'd love one Lainey!' 'I'd like one too!' That's all I'd hear. I loved doing it.
Of course, I fell madly in love with Steve Lillywhite who was working with U2 at the time. It was a great time. You'd see Sinéad O'Connor walking down the street in her black leather. We'd go for dinner with Adam Clayton, it was like one big family.
Interestingly, none of us left. We all stayed in Dublin and there was no talk of moving to London. I think the fact that there was no wealth added to the sense of adventure and risk. There was just an attitude of 'let's go for it', we had nothing to lose.
The fashion was mad-crazy and fun. I was never a great follower of trends. I'm more of a colour and a touch and feel fiend. My wardrobe was full of colour and fun. Dublin, of course, was very different. There were fewer boutiques but there were things happening. There was a boutique, Otokia on South Anne Street, owned by Marianne Gunn O'Connor. She was the first person to take Dolce & Gabbana outside of Italy. Cecily McMenamin in Brown Thomas had beautiful collections. But it was all very small scale. There was an Yves St Laurent store that opened briefly but it closed quickly. It was a bit too far ahead of its time, I think.
I got my international break in 1989 when I won a fashion award from Christian Lacroix after showing a collection in Monte Carlo. I had stayed throughout the 1980s and I was always determined to stay at home and keep my business in Ireland. It all almost fell apart in the early 1990s because of that, but these challenges make you stronger, I think.
By the end of the decade, many of my friends who had remained independent and creative had become very successful. I mean U2 were the biggest band in the world by then. We ate of the heavenly fruit of adventure and it paid off."
BOSCO
Then: Star of iconic 1980s children's show.
Now: Still touring the country. Currently enjoying a comeback as the children of the 1980s introduce their own children to Bosco.
'I HAD the number one Christmas album in 1983. Do you remember that? We recorded it in Lombard Street Studios and it was just lovely - a great big vinyl album of all of the songs from the show. It was a great success but there was no champagne or celebrity lifestyle for me.
Recording the show kept me very busy. Remember Gráinne and Frank and Marian and Philip, the other presenters? I couldn't say I had a favourite, but Marian was great, wasn't she? She was sort of like everyone's mammy.
My favourite bits of the show were when the cameras came into my box and all the boys and girls got to see where I lived. The Tongue Twisters were brilliant too. I used to try and get it right but I never could. Maybe it was I couldn't make my neck longer like the Tongue Twisters did when they said the rhymes. They never made a mistake.
In those days, there were only two channels, so when you were on television you really were a celebrity. There were Bosco mugs, posters, duvet covers, even Bosco puppets. They looked really like me, too. I was a guest on all sorts of shows. I got to meet Uncle Gaybo on the Late Late Toy Show - that was exciting. Thelma Mansfield had me on her show, and I was on Dempsey's Den. I can barely remember now but I was on everything. It was all very exciting.
The Magic Door is something a lot of people talk about when they remember Bosco. 'Knock, knock, open wide, see what's on the other side. Knock, knock, anymore, come with me through the Magic Door,' and then the door would open and we'd be all in the zoo or something. It really was magic.
I loved filming those bits in the zoo when the keepers would talk to me and tell me about the different animals. The ring-tailed lemurs were lovely.
People think if you're on television you must be a millionaire. I'm not. The show ended in 1987. It had been running for seven years, so by that stage you have a whole new audience for the programme. RTÉ repeated it for years. I had toured all over the country during the time the show was being filmed. When recording finished I kept touring. There was always huge excitement when I'd pop out of my box. I think the boys and girls really loved seeing me.
The boys and girls that watched Bosco in the 1980s are all grown up now, but they still remember me. I went to the Electric Picnic three years ago. I was really nervous. I didn't know how they would react, but out I popped and, oh my goodness, the cameras flashed!
All of the children who watched me in the 1980s were there. There were some girls near my box and all I could hear was, 'Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, it's Bosco!' There was so much goodwill towards me. It was just like old times."
ÉAMONN Ó CATHÁIN
Then: Proprietor of Shay Beano, a popular Dublin restaurant.
Now: Author and presenter of Bia's Bóthar on TG4 .
'I REMEMBER being tremendously excited when the espresso became available in Dublin. It was about 1987 and Pamela Fitzmaurice of Blazing Salads served me a beautiful espresso in the Powerscourt Centre. After that, everyone began to get the machines, but it was wonderful to get that first one. I remember thinking how great it was that you didn't have to go to France for decent coffee anymore.
I came to live in Dublin in 1979. The place was surprisingly food oriented - more so than the UK - and as a result it had more of an appeal for me. It was quite Continental. You could get things like peanut oil in Dublin, even in the early 1980s. If you had asked for a litre of peanut oil in Belfast at that time, they would have looked at you as though you had five heads. That certainly swung my decision.
I remember there was a fantastic cheese shop that opened in the Westbury Mall. The woman in charge of the shop - Monica Murphy - really knew her stuff and sourced cheeses from all over, Corsica even. You'd actually end up getting better stuff in that place than in France.
There wasn't a huge choice of places to eat but it was okay - a couple of Italian places, there was a Greek place on South Richmond Street, and things like that.
When I opened Shay Beano in 1982, I served food that I had learned to eat and liked to eat in France. Not everyone understood it at first. I did away with tablecloths for example, which upset some.
In the early 1980s, tablecloths and silver were almost more important than the content of your plate. People went out to eat, not so much for the food so much as the sense of occasion. Well, I just served good food at keen prices and didn't stand on ceremony - it's probably better understood now.
Setting up a business at that time was easy for me because I had no concept of a recession. I was totally innocent. Some might say I was an eejit, but I had had people coming over to the house for dinner parties and they would say, 'You should do this professionally', so I did.
It worked because the food and the prices were good. It attracted an interesting crowd. I have a keen memory of Seán Mac Réamoinn and Colm Tóibín singing into the small wee hours in the restaurant. I'm sure a few drinking laws were broken, but a lot of people appreciated what I was trying to do.
It was a wonderful and crazy time and we had a ball. I didn't have a phone in the place, so bookings were chaotic, but there were only nine tables, so it wasn't too bad. I did, however, have to turn my own mother away one particularly busy night.
There was a very good scene in Dublin at that time. People worked hard. I mean, you'd work all day and all night and then go to the Pink Elephant or somewhere in the small hours. There were a lot of British pop stars who decanted to Dublin for a while for tax purposes. Frankie Goes to Hollywood were massive at the time and you'd see them around a lot.
I think food-wise we were probably going through a form of gastronomic puberty. Shay Beano was on South Leinster Street and I opened another place on Lower Stephen's Street. It was very popular and I did it for a full 10 years before it began to falter. When it did, it was because of the bigger bistros that opened up in the early 1990s and we simply couldn't compete. I think we'd do quite well with a place like that again now."