A man of principle

THE decision by former Fianna Fáil deputy leader Éamon Ó Cuív not to leave the party his grandfather founded some 86 years ago came as no surprise to those who know him. He is a man with a deep sense of loyalty to Fianna Fáil and while he believes the party is now wrong on a number of issues, it would go against the grain for him to pull the plug on his membership.
It was that loyalty, which also made up his mind for him to take a vow of silence and not to campaign for a ‘no’ vote in the European Fiscal Treaty.
It was not a bad result either for the Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin, who has had his leadership accepted by Ó Cuív’s decision to obey the Cork man’s directives.
Only time will tell if Ó Cuív will continue to serve under Mr Martin. He may continue to be a thorn in the side of the leader and may even challenge Mr Martin for the leadership at some future occasion. However, for the time being, peace reigns in Fianna Fáil.
If he had resigned this week, it might have been the straw to break the camel’s back. It would certainly have been another serious blow to Mr Martin’s efforts to blow new life into a party that was the biggest political party during most of the life of this state.
Éamon Ó Cuív stands for the values that were at the core of Fianna Fáil for most of its existence but which are now considered to be somewhat out of date in today’s Ireland.
While he might not be highly popular among his parliamentary party colleagues, Ó Cuív is highly regarded by a lot of ordinary Fianna Fáil members, especially in the West of Ireland. If he were to depart it is fairly certain that he would take some chunk of support away from Fianna Fáil.
There was some speculation in recent times that he might be about to jump ship and join Sinn Féin. That would be a strange decision indeed. The IRA and the Republican movement in general, of which Sinn Féin is a part, was ruthlessly hounded by Ó Cuív’s grandfather Éamon de Valera during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.
It was under his leadership that the State embraced the Offences Against the State Act, one of the most draconian pieces of legislation ever passed by Dáil Éireann in an effort to defeat the IRA.
Republicans and members of Sinn Féin were hanged and shot. Republicans were arrested and held without trial for years while others were allowed to die on hunger strike.
I am not saying that the tactics employed by de Valera to wipe out the IRA were either right or wrong. What I am saying is that it would be somewhat ironic now if the grandson of de Valera jumped from the ship launched by his grandfather and joined Sinn Féin.
It can be argued, of course, that Sinn Féin no longer has a military wing and can be accepted by constitutional politicians. The IRA has gone away, you know. Or so they say.
As I pointed out here last week, Fianna Fáil started out as a splinter group from Sinn Féin. But a lot of water has flown into the sea since then and in the meantime, Fianna Fáil and Sinn Féin went their separate Republican ways – one to continue to support the armed struggle and the other exclusively to support constitutional nationalism.
Now they are close to each other once more except that Sinn Féin is today out on the far left while Fianna Fáil is as it has been for several decades, right in the centre.
I have known Éamon Ó Cuív for more than 40 years and I know him as a man with very sincere views. He is not like most politicians who like to take a populist line on most issues. Ó Cuív is a man of principle. He believed sincerely as minister in charge of Gaeltacht affairs some years ago that the ancient Gaelic name An Daingean or Daingean Uí Chúise was the correct name of the capital town of the Corca Dhuibhne Gaeltacht in West Kerry and not Dingle, which was imported from the suburbs of Liverpool. He believed that if the people of the town wanted to remain in the Gaeltacht and continue to retain their generous Gaeltacht grants, they should be willing to use the old Gaelic name of An Daingean rather than the English Dingle.
They should have either one or the other. That was his belief and he stuck to it despite the fact that his stand cost Fianna Fáil support in the Kerry area. There is no Fianna Fáil TD in Kerry today. Ó Cuív would always put principle before party.
Whether Fianna Fáil would survive the loss of Ó Cuív is something that we will not know now. I have argued before that Fianna Fáil survived previous difficulties because it was a strong party that had roots in every village and town in the State.
It survived its early days despite the uproar surrounding the jailing and hanging of former comrades in the 1940s. It survived the big national teachers’ strike of the 1940s when thousands of people abandoned Fianna Fáil and joined the new republican party Clann na Poblachta. It survived the TACA years of big business scandals of the 1960s and all the planning and corruption allegations of later decades. It survived the departures of party stalwarts such as Neil Blaney and Kevin Boland in the 1970s and the founding of the latest new republican party Aontacht Éireann. It survived the Haughey era and all the scandals surrounding financial skull duggery at the highest levels of the party in the 1980s and 1990s.
But Fianna Fáil is no longer a national movement like it was when it came up against all those former big problems. It has no TD at all in Dublin today and there are vast areas of Munster and Leinster without a Fianna Fáil deputy either.
I am not sure if it could survive the loss of Éamon Ó Cuív.