Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom
July 10, 2001
Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie marked "attention web-editor".
WHEN the votes had been counted following the 26-County general election on May 30, 1951 Clann na Poblachta found itself reduced to two seats in Leinster House.
It was a big loss from the ten seats it won in 1948. Indeed Seán McEntee of Fianna Fáil with his barbed wit was his usual abusive self when he likened the Clann na Poblachta experience to "a fish which had a brush with a cat – nothing left of it but a head and a tail".
The two Clann na Poblachta deputies who held their seats were Seán Mac Bride (the "head") and John Tully of Cavan (the "tail"). Mac Bride maintained his position in Dublin South-West, while Tully who seldom spoke in Leinster House was re-elected in Cavan.
On June 13 de Valera returned to office with 74 votes to the opposition’s total of 69. Fianna Fáil had, at 69, gained one seat over its 1948 figure but five Independents supported them and restored them to power as a minority administration.
Three years in office 1948-51 marked a turning point for Fine Gael, which had 30 seats in 1944 and 31 in 1948, but recovered by 1951 to win a total of 40.
Labour had 16 in 1951, a loss of three; Clann na Talún six (down one), while Independents grew from 12 to 14. The whole debacle for the Coalition elected in 1948 grew out of the celebrated Mother and Child health scheme which split Clann na Poblachta and caused the downfall of the Coalition Administration.
The two main elements that comprised the Clann, those with a Republican background (led by Mac Bride) and those with a stern Socialist conscience (led by Dr Noel Browne), were sundered.
The Mother and Child Scheme was originally part of the 1947 Health Act drafted by Fianna Fáil who were still in power. It was shelved then when the Catholic hierarchy made known its opposition to the measure.
The Scheme was revived by Dr Browne as Minister for health in 1950. He had already made a great success of combating the scourge of tuberculosis then rampant in the country. His leadership in this regard was dynamic.
Browne now proposed a scheme of health care and education "in respect of motherhood", which was not to be compulsory. It would be available to all mothers, and children up to sixteen years of age. There was to be no means test.
The Irish Medical Association with which Dr Browne had a poor relationship objected to the concept of "socialised medicine". In July 1950 Browne told Leinster House he would not agree to a means test and received the backing of the Cabinet.
During October of that year, the Catholic Bishops considered the Scheme and expressed disquiet at clauses which had already been rejected in 1947. These were the lack of a means test and freedom of choice of doctor.
Nobody apparently adverted to the fact that "socialised medicine" had already come in north of the Border under the British labour government which had been in power since 1945. It did not appear to have done any harm to the people of the Six Counties – quite the contrary in the opinion of many.
Dr Browne met the bishops and felt he had dealt satisfactorily with their objections. When the IMA indicated the lack of resources at the disposal of the State, the Minister insisted that a means test be rejected.
Then the bishops made it clear to the Cabinet that they considered there was an important "issue of faith and morals". The family, they stated, was the final arbiter in matters of sex education.
They also objected to non-Catholics treating Catholic mothers-to-be or offering them sex education which might be at variance with accepted Catholic social teaching. The debate went on until March 1951.
Then Dr Browne published the Scheme and two days later the bishops rejected it. The Cabinet refused to support the Minister and abandoned the Scheme in the face of the bishops’ and the Medical Association’s objections.
Browne had now also been rejected by his own party, Clann na Poblachta: Seán Mac Bride had demanded his resignation. Dr Browne did so and published his correspondence with the Catholic Hierarchy. The Dublin government fell in May 1951 as a result.
There was much agitation centred on the Mother and Child Scheme. A huge mass public meeting was held in College Green, Dublin, protesting at the upholding of a means test. Speakers included Eoin ("the Pope") O’Mahony who had been so active in securing the release of Republican prisoners.
"Eoin was always with the forces of disorder," commented one Dublin secondary teacher originally from Leitrim. Also prominent at debates and protests against the "means test" was Sinn Féin public speaker Séamus Soraghan, BL. At a debate in UCD’s Literary and Historical Society on the Mother and Child Scheme, he made an impassioned contribution criticising the vested interests of the medical consultants and others who lived in the "crescents and squares" of the fashionable areas of Irish cities.
Certainly the Special Branch were in attendance in force at the College Green protest. As little groups gathered after the meeting, the Branch men were prominent in each group – avidly listening to the continuing discussions and noting the speakers. What had this social question got to do with "Offences Against the State", one might ask? Was it not normal politics? The Establishment felt under threat – their power was endangered, they figured.
Of the six seats held by Clann na Poblachta in Dublin in 1948, only one – that of the leader – was retained in 1951.
Peadar Cowan had departed in late 1948. Now Noel Browne, Dr French-O’Carroll, with leading supporters such as Noel Hartnett, BL resigned. Con Lehane stood by Mac Bride and lost his seat.
In the countryside, Jack McQuillan of Roscommon, the former All-Ireland footballer joined with Browne and held his seat. Paddy Kinane in North Tipperary and Timony in South Tipperary remained with Clann na Poblachta and lost their seats.
Outside of Dublin, only John Tully, loyal to Mac Bride, was returned to Leinster House, Drs Browne and French-O’Carroll, standing as Independents, were victorious in Dublin.
The forward momentum of Clann na Poblachta, Fianna Fáil’s main political enemy, was halted and the party broken. At the next election in 1954, there was a slight recovery when a third seat was gained in North Kerry.
Johnny ("Machine-gun")’Connor joined Mac Bride and Tully in Leinster House. They supported the second Coalition government there under John A Costello but refused a place at Cabinet.
Eventually in 1957 they brought down that administration when it collaborated with the British forces at the Border and jailed Republicans. Mac Bride lost his seat in the 1957 general election as did O’Connor’s daughter (who had succeeded him in North Kerry following his death in a motoring accident). Tully alone remained and Clann na Poblachta dissolved in 1965.
Dr Browne went on to join Fianna Fáil in 1953 and lost his seat in 1954. Again as an Independent in 1957 he re-gained it and was co-founder with Jack McQuillan of the National Progressive Democrats Party in 1958. He joined the Labour Party in 1963 and held a seat with them until 1973. In 1977 he became the only sitting member of the Socialist Labour Party.
A lecturer in English in UCD and later in UCG, Dr Lorna Reynolds proclaimed publicly that "It did not matter if Noel Browne changed his parties as often as he changed his shirts," she would still vote for him. She felt he adhered to socialist principles.
But Dr Browne seemingly had no national principles. He often walked out of Leinster House rather than take a stand when his colleague Jack McQuillan raised the question of the Republican internees in the Curragh 1957-59.
In 1972 he lined up with unionist spokespersons such as William Craig in a televised debate in Boston which was carried coast-to-coast in the USA and later on RTÉ television in Ireland.
Browne could not ask unionists to join the 26-County confessional state, he said. Other speakers on the night including Ruairí Ó Brádaigh who called for a totally New Ireland with complete separation of church and state.
After the Clann na Poblachta debacle in 1951 the way was clearer for the Republican Movement. Many former Clann members and supporters at local level would support Sinn Féin "provided it was clear there would be no question of going into Leinster House". The constitutional road led nowhere, only to disillusionment.
But, irony of ironies, the Fianna Fáil Administration introduced and carried through in 1953 a Health Act which included in effect the Mother and Child Scheme. However, there was to be no means test!
Meanwhile, north of the Border, street politics by nationalists continued in answer to the Stormont regime’s intransigence. Unionist spokespersons seized upon the Mother and Child episode in the 26 Counties to highlight the confessional nature of the State there and maintain that "Home Rule would be Rome rule".
In April 1951, James McSparran, Stormont MP and a lawyer, successfully challenged the ban on the Irish national Tricolour in the Belfast High Court on a technicality. The Stormont response was to draft a Public Order Bill to reinforce the permanent Special Powers Act.
It sought further control over purely political opposition to itself. The Public Order Bill required 48 hours notice of all parades other than traditional – ie Orange – ones, and giving the Stormont Home Affairs Minister or the RUC power to ban or re-route parades at will if they thought they might lead to a breach of the peace.
The opposition nationalists denounced the Bill but it was rushed through Stormont by July 3, 1951. Eddie McAteer, Stormont MP, declared that "the immediate duty of the people of Derry was to meet the Bill with determined, disciplined disobedience".
But the first clashes were in Enniskillen. Even before the Bill became law the RUC attacked an AOH parade on August 15, batoning men and women and seizing the Tricolour. Later they cut down Tricolours from several private houses in the town, including Cahir Healy’s.
Again the unionist regime was responding to pressure from local loyalists. TC Nelson, the unionist MP for Enniskillen, said: "Had the Minister for Home Affairs refused to forbid the Tricolour being carried through Enniskillen then we would have taken steps to see it wasn’t carried."
It was no idle boast, a few days later three hundred loyalists armed with clubs and cudgels prevented a local nationalist band from parading through the village of Tempo near Enniskillen . . .
(More next month. Refs. Northern Ireland: The Orange State by Michael Farrell and A Dictionary of Irish History 1800-1980 by Hickey and Doherty.)
Contents
|
Web layout by SAOIRSE -- Irish Freedom July 10, 2001 Send links, events notifications, articles, comments etc, to the editor at: saoirse@iol.ie marked "attention web-editor". |