DIARY STAN GEBLER DAVIES
The count at Clonakilty commenced at nine in the morning, an hour at which I rarely encounter daylight without having been up all night, but an occasion not to be missed. In British elections it is an easy matter to predict the outcome shortly after the ballot boxes have been opened, by the simple expedient of comparing the size of the various piles of ballots as they are allocated to each candidate. Under the system of proportional representation which obtains in Ireland, more subtlety is required, and better eyes. Second, third, even fourth, fifth, sixth preference votes are vital. Each party employs tallymen at the count, who stand in ranks on chairs behind the official counters, their faces screwed up in concentration. By 11 o'clock, it was all over bar the shouting, and time to repair for breakfast in the tSugain or de Burca's, or both. A last- minute effort by one Fianna Fail candidate to pinch votes from his running mate had cost the party, and Charles J. Haughey, a necessary gain. Mr Sheehan, rumpled candidate for Fine Gael, covered in cigarette ash and wreathed in smiles, was able to make a date for a convivial drink in Buswell's hotel next month, across the road from Leinster House and nearest hostelry to Dail Eireann.
Each canditate was allowed ten tally- men. Conservatives being scarce on the ground in West Cork, I allocated my tickets to Fianna Fail and Progressive Democrat friends who wanted to be in on the crack. (`Crack' — from the Gaelic. Untranslatable, signifying `fun, talk, con- troversy, drink, conviviality'.) In return, these gentlemen let me know how many second- and third-preference votes I got, which otherwise would not have been counted, I being eliminated on the first count. The PeeDees, who ran only one
candidate, favoured me with a flattering number of second preferences but a posi- tive flood of third preferences came my way from my Fianna Fail neighbours, once they had disposed their first and second votes. I had lunch with the Progressive Democrats, whose candidate's brother, un- surprisingly, owned the .local hotel, but whooped it up in the evening with the lads from Fianna Fail, whose campaign anthem, `Arise and follow Charlie', was borrowed, incidentally, from the Scottish Jacobites. By three in the morning, this was sounding somewhat ragged, as it be- came evident that the nation had risen up to follow Charlie, but not far enough.
Upon reading in a Sunday newspaper a self-congratulatory extract from Michael Heseltine's turgid memoirs, I am reminded of Richard West's story about him. Hesel- tine decribes how he, as Secretary of State for the Environment and 'one of the more determined, ambitious and talented mem- bers of this government', persuaded a bunch of City men, after a tour of the Liverpool slums, to lend him 30 of their best middle-management chaps to sort out Merseyside. This they did gladly enough, obviously on condition that they were never again required to set foot in the place, now a wasteland but which I can remember as a pleasant city from my childhood. Heseltine has always been a great believer in the talents of others. When proprietor of the long-defunct maga- zine Town, he suggested that West be commissioned to write an article. Michael Parkinson, then editor, told him that West would most likely decline the commission because he could not stand the sight of the said proprietor. 'But why should Dick West dislike me?' asked a pained Hesel- tine. 'Because,' answered Parkinson, 'he has met you.'
The London Evening Standard has pulled an amusing stroke by resurrecting the Evening News in an attempt to sabot- age the launch of Robert Maxwell's Lon- don Daily News, which appeared for the first time on Tuesday. The Evening News will sell at 15p. One hundred thousand copies will be distributed, in what is known technically in the trade as a spoiling opera- tion. The old News disappeared in 1981, incorporated into the Standard, but its readership, which should have come with it, largely evaporated. The new joint read- ership was further eroded by a policy of importing onto the Standard editorial staff certain deadbeats who had sunk the News in the first place. Over the last several months, faced with the Maxwell challenge, the paper has improved immeasurably. It was Lord Beaverbrook's favourite organ. I am sure the News resurrection will mightily amuse the old ogre, should word of it reach him in whatever part of the hereafter he happens to inhabit. When I first joined the Londoner's Diary on the Standard, 21 years ago, I was shown a memorandum of his which forbade us to mention cham- pagne parties. 'It it to be assumed,' it read, `that all Standard readers serve champagne at their parties.'
The 1929 (Infant Life) Preservation Act, which had been thought to prevent the killing of an unborn child capable of being born alive, appears in the light of this week's judgment in the Court of Appeal, to be a dead letter. The same law, more or less, had obtained in the Republic of Ireland but was distrusted by the people for the very reason that they feared judges and lawyers might tamper with it. The question was settled by the passing at a referendum of a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to life of all children from conception. Liberal critics of this enlightened fundamental law could only make the sarcastic answer that what hap- pened to a child when it emerged from the womb was of less consequence to the amendment's supporters than its undis- turbed gestation, but that was easily ex- posed as a fallacy. In the matter of respect for life, the Irish, our troubles notwith- standing, are some way ahead of the English. We do not let savagery into the operating theatre.
Great sadness in Kinsale. Finnbarr Tierney's splendid mare, Spirit of the Armada, which was to have run for the first time in Waterford on Sunday, broke a leg while galloping on Garretstown strand, and was put down. We are reduced to her stable-companion, optimistically named Dreams of Gold, on whom we pin our hopes at Skibbereen on Sunday week. Miley Murphy has his eye on another. We may call it Conservative and Unionist.
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