Candidates in Eire
B., BRIAN INGLIS Dublin ALITTLE over three years ago Mr. de Valcra's party, which had held office for sixteen years, made an unsuc- cessful visit to the country, returning to the Dail in a small minority. The balance of power was held by Independents, of whom enough were found to lend their support to the new inter-party alliance to enable Mi. Costello to form a Government. This makeshift coalition, compounded of every element from extreme Left (though the Left in Ireland is far from extreme) to diehard Right, was not expected to survive for long ; but somehow or other the Aneurin O'Bevans and Waldron McSmitherses settled down amicably into a team. The Inde- pendents, however, who had helped to bring the Government in, finally contrived to put it out ; their efforts as a tail to wag the inter-party dog eventually irritated the Ministers beyond endur- ance. Early this month the Dail was dissolved: The country goes to the polls on May 30th, and nobody will be very surprised if the Independents—the same Independents—are again found to hold the balance of power when the Dail reassembles in the middle of June.
The importance of these Independent Deputies in Irish Parlia- mentary life is, in fact, very great. Partly this is due to Propor- tional Representation, partly to the native tendency to vote for the man rather than the party. They happen, too, to be as interesting a bunch of individuals as you could hope to meet in a legislative assembly. The largest group are farmers. The Irish farmers have a party of their own, the Clann na Talmhan. (For those who complain about the pronunciation of the English language, it should be said that Talmhan rhymes with balloon.) But farmers here, as elsewhere, have difficulty in presenting a united political front ; and the Dail usually has a sprinkling of "Independent Farmers," "Independents (Farmer)' and plain "Farmers," whose allegiance to any government is never very secure. .
On this occasion, though, it is an Independent from the city who is attracting most attention. Dr. Noel Browne was known before the 1948 election only as a devoted worker for T.B. sufferers ; he had been one himself. He joined Mr. MacBride's party the better to press his T.B. cause ; was elected for a Dublin constituency, and was appointed straightway as Minister for Health—all in a matter of weeks. Has ever a political rise been more rapid ? As a Minister he gained immediate success. Beds appeared where before there had been only blueprints, and the country was driven, willingly enough, into consciousness of its serious health problems. As his influence grew, Dr. Browne, always single-minded, became increasingly intolerant of opposi- tion. The medical profession reacted against him as violently as had their colleagues in England against Mr. Bevan ; the Catholic hierarchy began to raise objections, and, too late. the Cabinet decided that their white-headed boy had grown too boisterous ; he must be slippered and sent to bed. It fell to his leader, Mr. MacBride, whose previous career had not been such as to suggest that he would follow a clerical line, . to administer the punishment. "That Jemmy Twitcher should peach me," Dr. Browne in anguish cried, "I own surprises me " : and he retaliated by publishing the whole correspondence, in- cluding a letter from himself to Mr. MacBride, at the tone of which MacHeath himselftmight have blushed. Now Dr. Browne is going up in his old constituency against Mr. Costello, and no election results will be more eagerly awaited than those of Dublin South-East to see whether he has beaten the Premier to head the poll. On the north bank of the Liffey 'another former member of Mr. MacBride's party is also seeking re-election as an Inde- pendent—the unpredictable Captain Peadar Cowan. Little more than h year ago Captain Cowan was the bite noire of Irish Protestantism. He had formed an embryo private army, with which, he announced, he intended to settle the Partition problem by force, as it showed no signs of being settled in any other way. Last month, however, Captain Cowan, in the true tradition of anti-clerical Republicanism, came out strongly on Dr. Browne's side in a speech, ecstatically reported in Belfast, which was designed to show by quotations from an Italian Cardinal that Dr. Browne's plans were in step with the teachings of the Church. Th:s may not have improved Captain Cowan's chances of. re- election; but the Dail would be a duller place without him. A rival Independent in the same constituency (which has five seats) is certain of return. Alderman Alfred Byrne—" Alfie " to all Dublin, of which he was Lord Mayor for a decade—not only gets in easily at every election, but gets another Alfred Byrne, his son, in with him in an adjoining constituency. "Had I twelve sons... "he might well ponder.. Certainly he could get most of them in on his own lovability. Another certainty is Oliver Flanagan, the monetary reformer from Leix-Offaly, who did more than any man to bring down Mr. de Valera's Government three years ago. As a leading protagonist in the exposure of the Locke Distillery scandal, he might have suffered in reputation when investigation revealed nothing very scandalous after all. The judges tried to rub in this fact ; but Flanagan scored off them wittily. They retaliated by criticising him adversely in their report ; his consti- tuents' answer was to elect him with the highest single poll in the country. He has suffered from ill-health since, and in any case is less happy as defence counsel than as the Opposition's public prosecutor ; but his return is not in doubt.
Then there is Mr. James Dillon, the most disliked and the most successful Minister for Agriculture for twenty years • and, finally, Mr. Thomas Burke, of County Clare. Mr. Burke has not, at the time of writing, yet issued his election manifesto ; but it will probably be on similar lines to his last, in which he criticised the electors for not returning him with a safer majority.
"I had given the use of their limbs," his 1948 address ran (Mr. Burke is a bonesetter), "to people of every class in County Clare without fee or reward, and never asked what Party any of them belonged to when they came to me. But now. when I want their No. 1 votes, I have, to go on my knees, almost, to beg their votes off them. It is very disappointing to find people so ungrateful as to forget what I have done for them when they were no use to themselves or anybody else ;_only a mere bundle of shattered bones. Now, when they can do their daily work, surely I should expect a simple stroke of the pencil—that is the only com- pensation I ask, or get."
Mr. Burke rarely attends the Dail ; certainly he has not been seen for many a long day from the Press gallery. But one appearance he did make, and that was to vote at the election of the new Premier in 1948. It could happen that his vote will be vital in the same issue next month, for the indications at the moment are that there will be little change in the political balance. The inter-party group, with their divergent views, would admittedly be an easy mark for a latter-day Zinoviev letter ; and it is known—has actually been reported in the Belfast Press—that Dr. Browne has some explosive- material that was excised from the published correspondence over his resignation that could. it is believed, cause a very nasty political odour indeed. Otherwise, however, there is no reason to adticipate any major change. It really looks as if our Independents will return once more to rule our roost.
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