A Just Society for Ireland? 1964-1987

C. Meehan

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137022066
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Drawing on interviews with key players and previously unused archival sources, this book offers a fascinating account of a critical period in Fine Gael's history when the party was challenged to define its place in Irish politics.

1

A New Ireland?

‘What was it all for? The whole thing was a cod’. Michael Moran – the principal male character of John McGahern’s Amongst Women – found himself questioning the merits of what the independence struggle (1919–1921) had produced: ‘some of our own jonnies in the top jobs instead of a few Englishmen. More than half of my own family work in England’.¹ Government spending had been hampered in the 1920s by the financial burden of reconstruction following the War of Independence and subsequent Civil War; the Great Depression stalked the 1930s, worsened by the Economic War with Britain, while frugality became the theme of the war years in the early 1940s, and rationing and strict controls remained in place after the world’s theatres of war fell silent. The 1950s are often described as Ireland’s ‘lost decade’,² characterised by high levels of emigration, unemployment and general poverty. These social ills were anathema to what the 1916/1919–21 period had seemed to promise and, like McGahern’s Moran, many were left wondering about the value of independence. However, by the late 1950s, an air of confidence, already identifiable among international neighbours who had enjoyed more of the post-war boom, was noticeable as the economy began to show signs of improvement. It seemed that the Irish experience was, perhaps, not that different after all to Eric Hobsbawm’s observation that ‘for 80 per cent of humanity the Middle Ages ended suddenly in the 1950s; or perhaps better still, they were felt to end in the 1960s’³ (italicised in text).

However, social development did not keep pace with economic modernisation. Social problems persisted. Roland Burke Savage, editor of Studies, laid down the challenge to decide Ireland’s future, asking if the country would drift or if an attempt would be made to shape it according to its needs.⁴ His article prompted several responses, and in following editions of the journal, a discussion about the nature of Irish society emerged. The contributions indicated a growing awareness of a responsibility by the state to enact social and economic change. David Thornley, an intellectual and future member of the Labour Party, advocated, for example, moving beyond debate to solid action. Parity of standards in education and social welfare with the rest of Western Europe, as he put it, was not a matter for ‘ethical debate and budgetary calculation’.⁵ It was in this context that Costello penned his proposals for a Just Society. He made his own contribution to the debate on Ireland’s development through the formulation of an eight-point plan, which later developed into the policy document, Towards a Just Society. It was written at a time when international expectations about the role of the state were changing. This shift in thinking was confined not just to politicians and policymakers, but significantly it was also acknowledged by the Catholic Church. Such changes, both at an international level, but, more specifically, in Ireland, were made possible by economic transformation, technological advances and a major breakthrough in the hierarchy’s thinking resulting from the Second Vatican Council.

Irish social policy: an overview

Irish policymakers were not typically concerned with social policy in the early years of the twentieth century. Political sovereignty was the dominant concern, followed by economic development. In 1919, before independence, the government of the revolutionary Dáil invited Labour Party leader Thomas Johnson to draft a Democratic Programme for economic and social reform. It was adopted at the inaugural meeting of Dáil Éireann on 21 January 1919. The young and the old – the most vulnerable in society – were addressed first. An emphasis was placed on the nation’s duty to care for the welfare of children, including the provision of adequate food, clothing, shelter and education. The poor law system was to be substituted with a more sympathetic scheme. The focus then shifted to the utilisation of the country’s resources – soil, peat and fisheries – for the benefit of the people. Although some of the radical elements survived, the finished product was stripped of much of the socialist content found in Johnson’s original draft.⁶ The interventionist approach certainly ran contrary to the church’s view on the role of the state. Furthermore, it has been argued that Labour’s socialist thinking might not have garnered sympathy in rural Ireland where a mix of peasant proprietorship and the high prices of the wartime agricultural economy had produced a sense of complacency about social issues.⁷ Additionally, the invitation to draft the programme was widely seen as a sop for Labour standing aside at the 1918 general election, leaving the field open for Sinn Féin in the interest of national solidarity. Neither Sinn Féin nor its pro-Treaty successor in the Free State government, Cumann na nGaedheal, had either the means or the real desire to implement the programme. The cost of reconstruction following the war of independence and civil war had placed a considerable strain on the exchequer. Only after 1926/27 did compensation cease to rank among the top five heaviest charges on the state’s expenditure.⁸ As Margaret O’Callaghan succinctly put it, ‘[Pádraig] Pearse’s clarity of vision was a luxury the nation could no longer afford’.⁹ Furthermore, in the early years of the Free State, the government was concerned with state and identity building and the achievement of democratic stability.¹⁰ The Catholic Church also influenced policymakers. When viewed in the context of what these early statesmen were attempting to achieve, this was inevitable. As Ronan Fanning put it, with the island partitioned and a full republic unattainable, ‘Catholicism, always central to so much of Irish nationalist ideology, took on an additional significance in the search for national identity’.¹¹ This meant that, in a state guided by the conservative principles of the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church, developments in social policy would be limited in scope.

Pope Pius XI expressed the view in his 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno that, ‘Of its very nature the true aim of all social activity should be to help individual members of the social body, but never to destroy or absorb them’.¹² This principal of subsidiarity favoured the individual or local community groups and opposed centralisation and state responsibility for the provision of social services. It was penned in the context of the growth of communism, the rise of fascism and the emergence of the totalitarian state in continental Europe,¹³ and it proved very influential in Ireland. It meant that the 1930s saw little development in the area of social policy, although this had been the case in the 1920s, also. Both Cumann na nGaedheal and Fianna Fáil implemented housing policies, although the latter was considerably more active. De Valera’s government also introduced the Unemployment Assistance Act in 1933, widows and orphans pensions in 1935 and children’s allowance in 1944. His government prepared a Health Act in 1947, but lost power at the general election the following February and the responsibility for implementing it fell to the new Minister for Health in the first inter-party government, Dr Noel Browne. His scheme to introduce a comprehensive health service for mothers and children up to the age of sixteen never came to fruition, however, as it was blocked by the combined power of the Catholic hierarchy and the Irish Medical Association.¹⁴ When Fianna Fáil returned to power, a scaled-back version was introduced in 1951. The episode offers an interesting commentary on social policy formulation: the spectacular failure of Browne’s programme and the power of those who opposed it served as a strong warning to politicians who might otherwise have considered radical reform. Arguably, the most important development in social policy in the 1950s was the Social Welfare Act, 1952, introduced by Fianna Fáil’s Dr James Ryan. The act gave birth to the social welfare system in Ireland. It consolidated and introduced benefits such as disability and maternity benefits, and it laid the foundation for future social welfare benefits.¹⁵

The 1960s, which saw the waning of the anti-interventionist ethos, witnessed an expansion of social policy, particularly in the area of education with the introduction of free post-primary education and the Local Authority (Higher Education Grant) Act, 1968, which opened up third-level opportunities. Change was made possible by social and religious transformation and by the emergence of a new generation within the political establishment. However, as discussed in later chapters, the demand for change tended to come from society itself rather than from the political elite.

‘An economic slum’

In addition to the multitude of localised factors, the West’s recovery following the Second World War was largely stimulated by the Marshall Plan, outlined by US Secretary of State, George Marshall, in an address at Harvard University on 5 June 1947. By the time that the programme was wound up in 1952, the US had spent $13 billion, a figure that exceeded all of the country’s previous overseas aid programmes combined.¹⁶ Between 1948 and 1950, France, the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Greece and West Germany recovered. In addition to the financial gain, there were also psychological benefits. As Tony Judt put it, ‘one might almost say that the Marshall Plan helped Europeans feel better about themselves’.¹⁷ Ireland’s recovery between 1945 and 1950 was the weakest of all the European economies, except for Spain.¹⁸ While Ireland initially experienced post-war prosperity, the boom was not sustained to the degree enjoyed by her western neighbours, and by the 1950s, the benefits had receded. The financial support received through the Marshall Plan was largely earmarked for agriculture in the belief that Ireland’s future lay in farming.¹⁹ Ireland had failed to maximise opportunities in the expanding European economy and was thus locked out of the affluence that accompanied it. The country went into relative decline compared to similar states in Western Europe,²⁰ prompting The Irish Times to report that Ireland was ‘falling behind’.²¹ In contrast to Britain’s figure of twenty-one per cent and Continental Europe’s of forty per cent, Irish national income grew by only eight per cent between 1949 and 1956.²² 1956 was a year of economic crisis. Gerard Sweetman, Minister for Finance in the second inter-party government (1954–57), believed that Ireland’s economic independence was at stake, such was the depth of the crisis.²³ He was not alone. As Tom Garvin has noted in his study of Irish newspaper coverage of the 1950s, papers such as the Standard also advocated launching the ‘battle for economic freedom’.²⁴

As Ireland struggled, British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was telling his voters that they had ‘never had it so good’. The 1950s in Britain was a period of affluence and increasing consumption.²⁵ Post-war reconstruction there created employment, and with few such opportunities in Ireland, the allure of a better life in the neighbouring country – relayed by relatives and friends who had already left – drew mainly young people away from their native land. By 1960, the average British worker earned at least forty per cent more than his Irish counterpart.²⁶ A Bank of England official who met with staff from the Irish Department of Finance while on a visit to Ireland in 1957 observed, ‘the country gives the impression of being an economic slum from which there is a constant outflow of emigrants who have any initiative and any desire to better themselves’.²⁷ The stark reality of Ireland in the 1950s was captured in John B. Keane’s Many Young Men of Twenty. The first act of the play shows brothers Kevin and Dinny preparing to leave for London, where they would join siblings already settled. Eighteen-year-old Dinny cried openly, admitting ‘I don’t want to go away at all’.²⁸ His tears reflected his frustration and the lack of choice available not just to him but also to those real emigrants whom his character represented. The fictional story of Kevin and Dinny was not far removed from the anguish of real emigrants captured in The Vanishing Irish.²⁹ Those who left in the 1950s and early 1960s were predominantly young, and they tended to be children of small farmers, unskilled or semi-skilled manual labourers.³⁰ Writing in Studies in 1951, R. C. Geary had wondered whether ‘a large proportion of those born here are pre-destined to emigrate?’³¹ Between 1951 and 1961, more than 400,000 people left the Republic of Ireland, a figure that accounts for almost one-sixth of the total population as recorded in 1951.³² The 1961 census showed the population to be at an all-time low of 2,818,341.³³ Among those who left was Michael Sweetman, who went to Canada in 1957. As a future member of the Fine Gael policy committee and research staff who worked on the 1965 election campaign, he would do much to assist behind the scenes in the development of the Just Society ideas.³⁴

The traditional government line on emigration had typically been one of denial. Eamon de Valera once claimed that ‘there is no doubt that many of those who emigrate could find employment at home at as good, or better, wages – and with living conditions far better – than they find in Britain’.³⁵ The incentive to respond was diminished by the fact that emigration to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgements
• Note on Terminology
• Introduction
• 1 A New Ireland?
• 2 Winning the Party
• 3 1965: The First Failure
• 4 1969: The Second Failure
• 5 From Leader in Crisis to Leader in Government
• 6 National Coalition, 1973–77
• 7 1980s: New Leader, New Party
• 8 The Constitutional Crusade
• 9 A Liberal Ireland?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index