Below is the original version of my huffy-puffy letter published in today's Irish Examiner. It is dedicated to a wise old bachelor of solid farming stock who has fond memories of being kept warm on cold winter nights by a worn-out blue garment bequeathed to him by his father.
Ryle Dwyer’s attempt to balance the books on political betrayal is itself a betrayal of objective journalism. His selective nuggets lack context and give legs to lazy thinking that dismisses all politicians on the basis that one is as bad as the other. This lies at the heart of the apathy that informs our political debate and is one of the reasons why it is difficult for enlightened politicians to engage with the electorate in a meaningful way.
The sleveenism that has infected Irish politics since the foundation of the state finds its roots in a single act of treachery which Mr. Dwyer alludes to without quite naming it as such. In skirting around Eamon de Valera’s great betrayal of our nation in 1921, he sets the scene for further contortions.
When de Valera finally came to power in 1932, he inherited a stable apparatus of state. It was not always so. Ten years before handing over the reins, the pro-treaty government had to deal with meagre finances and tremendous pressures both from within and without. The economy was on its knees, the threat of assassination was ever present and the civil war was tearing us apart.
The death of Michael Collins brought things to a head. It was time for true patriots to stand up and be counted. It was time to get this state up-and-running and kick off the stepping-stone stratagem that informed Collin’s acceptance of the treaty. If this meant seeking financial and military assistance from across the water, then this was a price that had to be paid — and it was against this backdrop that WT Cosgrave “agreed” to pay the dreaded annuities.
The outgoing Cumann na nGaedheal government would not have been human if they were not appalled by de Valera’s ascension to power and the public re-emergence of the anti-treaty IRA, whose ranks were now swollen by Johnny-come-latelies who would later receive military pensions for their troubles.
Sure, the dalliance with the “neo-fascist Blueshirts” and the use of back channels to the British were not its proudest moment but it is stretching credulity to suggest the economic war was a “parting contribution” of Cumann na nGaedheal. Small nations held no sway in that sinister decade and, with the trade cards stacked in its favour, the British cabinet was never going to accept de Valera’s annuities broadside lying down. When settlement finally came, after a protracted period of economic stagnation, it had more to do with a shift in Britain’s strategic interests than any great powers of persuasion on de Valera’s part.
Jack Lynch’s handling of the arms crisis must be viewed in the context of his precarious hold on the Fianna Fail leadership and the sizeable rump within his party that was gagging for bloodshed. Lynch’s great act of betrayal, and one that Ryle Dwyer fails to mention, was his Election Manifesto of 1977 which re-sowed the seeds of economic fecklessness and a return to mass emigration.
Mr. Dwyer’s comparison of the Browne/Coogan and Kennedy/Arnold phone taps does not stand up to scrutiny. The former involved contacts with an organisation that sought to undermine the state, while the latter involved the use of state personnel and equipment to illegally monitor internal party opposition.
No party has a monopoly on skulduggery, but some have sinned more than others.