Original sin of Fianna Fáil

COMMENT

Tone and Emmet guide you, though your task be hard
de Valera leads you, Soldiers of the Legion of the Rearguard.
The Legion of the Rearguard, by Jack O’Sheehan

I WONDER are there many young members of Fianna Fáil today who can sing the former anthem of the party.
All changed. Changed utterly. The Republicans were battered and broken when that song was composed at Harepark camp in the Curragh close to the end of the Civil War. However, within three years, they got up off their knees and formed a new party they called Fianna Fáil. Within nine years, they won power in this State, a power they seldom relinquished.
My father, Paddy McCormack was with Jack O’Sheehan in Harepark when he wrote that song. My father couldn’t get a permanent job in this State for a number of years after he was released from the Curragh because he would not swear an oath of allegiance to King George. However, after Fianna Fáil came into power in 1932, the oath was abolished and my father got a permanent job with Clare Vocational Education Committee.
There were hundreds, if not thousands, like him throughout the State.
But all that has changed. De Valera has not led Fianna Fáil for over 50 years. The party is now lead by a clutch of chickens. De Valera stood up to the big boys of Europe and America when he was leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach. He used the Treaty of 1921 as Michael Collins intended it to be used – as a pathway to freedom. He kept this country out of the Second World War, despite enormous pressure on him from abroad.
This week’s budget was a cowardly one that bowed down to some of the most powerful interests in the world at the expense of the most vulnerable in our society. Fianna Fáil under de Valera was the party that looked after the man with his backside out through his trousers and that man’s wife. Today, it is a party that looks after big business and to hell with the poor man and his wife.
It deserves to be where it is at 13% and behind Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Féin. Thousands of people who would have voted for Fianna Fáil even a few weeks ago would not vote for it today. Tens of thousands of people who supported that organisation in the past would now turn their backs on it.
I can put into a nutshell what has happened. Fianna Fáil always gave us what we wanted but when they could no longer do so, we bit the hand that fed us.
As time went by, the man with the see-through trousers began to wear Armani suits and his wife was proud in her Prada outfit and her Gucci shoes. Fianna Fáil became the party of the new rich.
You might say there is nothing wrong with that. Big business provides employment and employment puts money into all our pockets. However, and here I go back to what I learned as a child from my cathecism in the national school in Kilkishen, “it darkened our understanding, weakened our will and left us with a strong inclination to evil”.
We were learning about original sin but it might just as easily have been about Fianna Fáil’s association with big business. Fianna Fáil was corrupted. There are those who will say it happened under Charles Haughey. But it goes back further than that. In the mid-’60s, Fianna Fáil had a fundraising group called TACA, which looked after those powerful interests, which looked after the party.
TACA was dismantled because of bad press but the party continued to do shady deals with those who had enough money to run the country. You know the old cliché about power corrupting and absolute power corrupting absolutely.
A party with great original ideals was now rotten – I will not say rotten to the core – but rotten to a huge extent from top to bottom.
If you wanted planning permission for a house to be built in a place where it should never have been built, you went to a local Fianna Fáil councillor and hey presto, you got your permission. If you wanted a parking ticket or a speeding fine to be torn up, bob’s your uncle, the job was done. If you wanted a job for your son or daughter, Fianna Fáil was able to organise that too.
However, that’s all gone now too. At 13% of the poll, Fianna Fáil will no longer have the power to do those things.
Don’t get me wrong. The vast majority of the men and women in Fianna Fáil are decent people. They are involved in their local GAA and other community organisations. They would give their lives for their country but they have been treated merely as canvas fodder by the people at the top. Decisions are no longer taken at the grassroots of the party. The so-called leadership has ignored them and ignored their opinions.
Fianna Fáil has been in power too long and needs a spell in the Opposition wilderness where it can cleanse itself.
Brian Cowen and Brian Lenihan are decent and honourable people too. However, they have lost the will to govern. They are beholden to the banks and are dancing only to a tune played by the banks.
This week’s budget was the final straw. We expected a tough budget but what we got was a budget that hit the poorest and the weakest hardest. Those who can well afford it can always take a hit but this week’s budget provided no cushion for the most vulnerable.
Fianna Fáil has forgotten its roots.
“Wearied, outnumbered, undaunted, unafraid.
God Bless the Soldiers of the Rearguard.”
Goodbye to all that.