Political World
Walsh shows depth of his convictions – but what price will he pay for them?
Brian Walsh is under absolutely no illusion about the repercussions of the political bombshell he delivered on Monday morning when he became the first TD to state in public that he will not support the controversial abortion legislation being prepared by Government.
“It could herald the end of my membership of the party and of my political career. It does place me in a precarious position but I have done what I believe is right,” he told me earlier this week.
It means that when the Dail finally votes on the Protection of Maternal Life Bill in July (it’s going to take that long for it to go through all stages in the Oireachtas), Walsh will not follow his colleagues up the steep stairs of the Dail chamber and turn left into the Government lobby.
It’s a common enough site in British politics where backbench rebellions are frequent and sometimes lead to Government proposals being defeated. In many instances, there are no sanctions for the mutinous MPs.
But in Ireland it is a rare phenomenon. The culture of politics here is that a much stronger whip is imposed and defying the whip is a much bigger deal. In most cases, it leads to expulsion from the parliamentary party.
Occasionally, a member will be given a warning if he or she abstained. But as we have seen in this Dail, if you are a Government TD who votes against the Government you more or less lose the party whip. The Galway East TD Colm Keaveney knows all about that since last December.
It is rarer still for a TD to vote against the Government on a matter of conscience. In 1985, Dessie O’Malley was expelled for Fianna Fáil after supporting Coalition government legislation that liberalised the availability of contraceptives.
O’Malley was already in the wars with Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, having lost the party whip in an internal party row over the Northern peace process. His decision to back Fianna Fail’s Coalition rivals led to his expulsion from the party, an event that eventually resulted in the establishment of the Progressive Democrats a year later.
The decision by Walsh is a very brave one and has been done in accordance with his own conscience. It took everybody by surprise, not least because he has not been seen as belonging to a prominent group of Fine Gael TDs who had publicly voiced their concerns about the legislation.
As he has made very clear, he has very strong convictions on the matter and rejects the premise of any legislation that includes provisions for a suicide threat, no matter how rigorously drafted. He set out his thinking to me earlier this week:
“The overwhelming medical evidence is that abortion is an inappropriate treatment for mental health issues.
“It looks like we are going to ignore the evidence. I have no problem with anything that gives guidance and clarity to doctors to make sure that a woman’s life is protected. I have no problem either with the repeal of the 1860 Offences Against the Person Act.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
Academically, politics is described as a science. But in the real world, it’s more of an art – and one of the big decisions a Government has to make is to decide when to call an election.
Will they see out the full term, or will they go early – either to mitigate the damage they will ship, or to secure a victory before things go awry, or the economy takes a dip, or some kind of controversy erupts?
Timing is everything.
And there’s a bit of art to that – not to mention a lot of luck. If you call it early and win big, you’re a genius. If you call it early and lose, you are the political version of the village fool.
Charlie Haughey was a poor judge of the public mood. Twice he called snap elections and on both occasions they backfired. Haughey succeeded Jack Lynch as Taoiseach in late 1979 and did not – technically – have his own mandate. He tried to remedy that by calling an election in 1981. But it recoiled. Ray MacSharry warned him not to hold it during the H Block hunger strikes when republican prisoners were dying each day. He did not listen to the advice and found himself out of office.
After his return to power in 1987, Haughey tired of presiding over a minority government that kept on losing votes in the Oireachtas (the opposition won nine private members motions).
So he called a snap general election and it backfired. Fianna Fáil lost seats and had to broker a coalition deal with the Progressive Democrats and his long-standing political adversary Dessie O’Malley.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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World of Politics with Harry McGee
I was cycling down Mount Street in Dublin on Tuesday. It’s a wide esplanade that links the Grand Canal with Merrion Square. The street is a mixture of fine Georgian buildings and modern office blocks.
About half-way down is the office of the International Protection Office, which deals with asylum seekers who have arrived in the country.
Needless to say, the office has been overwhelmed in the past year. Besides an estimated 80,000 refugees who have arrived from Ukraine, there have been about 20,000 people from other parts of the world who have arrived into Dublin (mostly) claiming asylum.
The numbers peaked around Christmas, but they have been falling a little. In January, more than 1,300 people arrived seeking asylum but the numbers fell back to 831 and 858, in February and March respectively.
They are still huge numbers in a historical context.
So back to my cycle on Tuesday. I knew that some asylum seekers were camping outside the International Protection Office, but I was taken aback by how many. There were six tents lined up on the pavement directly outside. Then on the ramp that led down to the basement carpark on the side of the building, there were about another 20 tents.
It looked like what it was, a refugee camp in the middle of Dublin’s business district. If you pan out from Mount Street, you will find tents here and there in nearby streets and alleys. There were a good few tents in an alleyway off Sandwith Street about 500 metres away.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
World of Politics with Harry McGee
God that was a dramatic and historic weekend in England, wasn’t it? So much excitement, so much change, so much hype, so much out with the old and in with the new, and what looks like the coronation of a new leader. Yes, the local elections in Britain were something else weren’t they!
Apologies for not going on about King Charles III but the contract I signed when I became a lifelong republican forbids me to discuss the topic!
I know the British local elections sound a bit boring by comparison, but the results were stunning.
The Conservatives lost nearly 1,000 seats, the British Labour Party gained almost 500 and both the Lib Dems (with 350 gains) and the Greens (gaining over 200) also had amazing days at the polls.
It was Labour’s best day since 2002 but its victory was only partial. The Greens and the Lib Dems actually made gains at the expense of Labour in more affluent areas, and in parts of Britain where there were high numbers of graduates.
It was in the Red Wall constituencies in the North of England where the Labour recovery was strongest. These are working class constituencies with pockets of deprivation where people voted for the Labour Party forever. But all of those constituencies voted for Brexit and then voted for the Tories in the next general election. Labour is now winning back some of those votes.
Local elections are classified as second-tier elections which essentially means – from a national perspective – they are not life-or-death affairs, and not everything turns on them. Of course, it’s really important to have good local representation. But they are not an amazing weather vane for who rules the country.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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