Archive News
Opinion poll figures prove thereÕs life in the old Fianna F‡il dog yet
Date Published: 24-Oct-2012
The late great journalist Con Houlihan was once drinking with other scribblers from the Irish Press in Mulligan’s of Poolbeg Street when the conversation turned to a former colleague.
This particular fellow had quit journalism some time beforehand to become a novelist, playwright and screenwriter but little had been heard from his since.
“Whatever became of yer man?” asked one of those present. “Did he go to Hollywood or what?”
Quick as a flash, talking from behind the massive crúb of his hand which he used as a mask, Houlihan replied in his high-pitched Kerry accent: “He’s in Dublin, Dublin. Forgotten but not gone.”
For a lot of the 18 months since the last general election you could have said the same of Fianna Fáil. In the early days of 2011 – as we surveyed the wreckage – you looked at its motley crew of 20 male TDs and its leader (who bore original sin) and thought something unoriginal like ‘dead men walking’.
That said, I thought, and still do, that Noel Whelan’s claim that Fianna Fáil was dead and gone was not conceivable. Every generation one of the two established parties have had set-backs – until then it was usually been Fine Gael – and people started to say stuff like it’s the end of civil war politics and finally Irish politics is going to align itself along the left and right divide.
Problem with that is that there is no party with more than one Dail seat that’s on the left wing side of the divide. Labour certainly isn’t. It has become like the Normans – níos Gaelaí na na Gaeil féin.
And as for Sinn Féin, they are left only as long as they are left out of government. Once they go in to power (and that’s not too far away) just watch how quickly that pendulum will swing!
There were a number of factors behind my own belief that Fianna Fail’s demise was not permanent in nature. The party had the biggest organisation in the country, and a loyalty that was so deep-seated it was almost cult-like.
The self-made famine engineered by right-wing laissez faire merchants like Charlie McCreevy, Mary Harney, Michael McDowell, and the two yes men, Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen was a grievous act. It estranged even the most loyal and Fianna Fail lost not only its floating supporters but many of its core support too.
And so in descending order, Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn Fein all benefited with Phil Hogan’s plea to FF supporters to allow FG borrow their vote being particularly effective.
In the aftermath Fianna Fáil has concentrated on rebuilding the party, recruiting young members and candidates and pitching itself as an opposition party that is constructive, and somewhat contrite. It could not have been anything else and for the first year, it found it hard to raise its head above the parapet.
A few things have gone in the party’s favour of late. Micheal Martin has gone down relatively well as leader and people no longer associate him so closely with the ancien regime.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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