One Party Dominance

Fianna F� and Irish Politics 1926�2016

Sean McGraw, Eoin O'Malley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138308572
• eBook ISBN: 9781351389945
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Politique

Fianna Fáil was for most of the 20th century the democratic world's most successful political party. It dominated the politics of Ireland from 1932, when it first took power, until 2011 when it became a prominent electoral victim of the Great Recession.

This book provides original research that explains how Fianna Fáil became dominant and managed its coalitions of support to maintain that position for eight decades. It gathers prominent political scientists who focus on a variety of factors including its ideological flexibility, control of state resources and the venue for decision making, the party's leadership, its organisation and communications strategies. In addition the book takes a comparative approach to understanding the position of dominant parties in democratic countries, and uses empirical data to understand the sources of its support and decline.

It is a book that will be of interest not only to scholars of Ireland, but also to those who wish to understand the sources of power of dominant political parties and the impact of the Great Recession on democratic politics.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Irish Political Studies.

Fianna Fáil: the glue of ambiguity

Eoin O’Malley and Sean McGraw

Finding Fianna Fáil

‘Remember also that it is nearly impossible to translate the words “Fianna Fáil”,’ Mr De Valera said with a smile. ‘There is some advantage in that also.’ (McInerney, 1976)

Fianna Fáil, for many, is a mysterious political organisation. The name is deliberately ambiguous, giving away little that might link it to any European party family. It is usually translated as ‘Soldiers of Destiny’ although ‘Warriors of Ireland’ is probably a better translation. Fianna Fáil was also another name for the Irish Volunteers – the main military organ involved in the 1916 Rising and War of Independence. The party’s English subtitle, The Republican Party, certainly does not help us place Fianna Fáil clearly on any ideological map, because this version of republicanism might refer to any number of political traditions. Ideologically the party is ambiguous. It appears centrist, conservative, and attached to the state (both the Irish state and the idea that the state can offer solutions to collective action problems), but it has also been regarded as radical, socialist, anti-Catholic and even a threat to the state. More recently the label ‘neo-liberal’ was attached to it, while being led by a man who declared himself a socialist. Though often referred to simply as ‘The Party’, it does not obviously represent any part or section of society; it is ‘without social bases’ (Whyte, 1974).

Despite these apparent contradictions and deep ambiguity concerning what type of party Fianna Fáil really is, the party has been one of the most successful political organisations in twentieth-century Europe, consistently the largest party in Ireland, usually polling over 40 per cent of the vote (Figure 1), and occupying government for 62 of the almost 80 years between 1932, when it first came to power, and 2011, when its support collapsed in the midst of an extraordinary economic crisis for which it was blamed by the electorate.

Figure 1. Share of first preference votes in Irish general elections: 1926–2016.

Virtually throughout this entire period Fianna Fáil was the most popular party in rural Ireland and urban Ireland, among the working class and the middle class, among the young and the old. Unlike most other parties, demographics gave few clues as to the basis for Fianna Fáil support.

From the outset, Fianna Fáil was more of a nationalist party than a clear-cut ideological party. The choice of name was an attempt to claim the progeny and appropriate the legacy of independence for itself. It portrayed itself as the natural inheritor of a singular Irish nationalist tradition dating to the early nineteenth century. It sought to be a national movement and not a mere party. Although Fine Gael could make a reasonable claim to nationalism and state-building, especially given its role in governing Ireland in the first decade of independence, Fianna Fáil out-manoeuvred Fine Gael through its use of symbolism, rhetoric, leadership, and organisation to cement its nationalist credentials. A key factor in Fianna Fáil’s success was its ability to attract support across class and other social divisions. However, Fianna Fáil was never the undisputed party of the nation in the same way as, for instance, the Indian Congress Party was.

How then did Fianna Fáil achieve dominant party status and become what Carty describes in this volume as the ‘natural governing party’ in Ireland? Carty points out that Fianna Fáil shares this status with a number of other parties, all either associated with nation-building, state-building, or both. Such parties came to define political competition in their country. In order to sustain this position, we argue that the heart of Fianna Fáil’s overall success is its utter pragmatism, its ambiguous ideology, and ability to adapt consistently to changes within the party, party system, and broader society to maintain its levels of support. The party’s very founding is rooted in the decision by Éamon de Valera, Seán Lemass, and other leaders to abandon their previous rejection of parliamentarianism that had led to the 1916 Rebellion, their disapproval of the Treaty and the Oath to the British Crown, and subsequent willingness to go to war over these differences. Despite being painted as a ‘slightly constitutional party’ – an overused and over-analysed term – it was fully committing to parliamentarianism. Likewise, Fianna Fáil was able to reject the legitimacy of the state while tacitly accepting the institutions of the state as indeed legitimate. Once in power, Fianna Fáil reimagined the Irish state without actually changing it fundamentally. Its willingness to compromise on constitutional questions so closely associated with core party ideals suggests pragmatism was in the party’s DNA.

This article provides a broader historical context to the Irish party system and Fianna Fáil’s place within it. The goal is to reveal the depth and breadth of the party’s ability to maintain an ambiguity that allowed it to keep support across competing interests and to succeed electorally until its crushing defeat in the 2011 general election. Most of the articles in this special issue examine how Fianna Fáil has adapted in the period since the 1980s when party affiliation among voters was drastically eroding and party competition was intensifying, thereby challenging Fianna Fáil’s dominant status. By contextualising these latter party adaptations in a longer time frame, we can better assess how more recent ideological framing, organisational shifts, leadership strategies, and ties to voters may affect the party’s ongoing survival.

The foundation of the Irish party system and Fianna Fáil

We’re Fianna Fáil, and always were. Ever since the Risin’.

When Dick Walsh’s (1986: 1) father heard his East Clare neighbour’s declaration of allegiance to the party, as quoted above, he was sceptical. As Fianna Fail was founded 10 years after the 1916 Easter Rising, he enquired if his neighbour really meant 1916. ‘Since ‘98!’ replied his neighbour. The neighbour was referring to the United Irishman rebellion in 1798, which took place almost 130 years before Fianna Fáil was founded. Yet it seemed to make sense. And as we will see below, Fianna Fáil represented a political tradition that preceded its organisational formation.

The form that the Irish party system assumed is one of the enduring puzzles of Irish politics and as a result, an ongoing puzzle for comparative political scientists. Over 40 years ago, Whyte (1974) claimed the party system to be sui generis as unlike the rest of Europe it was ‘without social bases’. Carty (1983: 1) was puzzled by the fact that one found parties ‘heterogeneous in their bases of support, relatively undifferentiated in terms of policy or programme, and remarkably stable in their support levels’. Though Garvin (1974) and Mair (1987) have argued for the influence of certain cleavages in determining political competition, the party system remains ‘one of the most intriguing mysteries of Irish politics’ (Gallagher & Marsh, 2002: 180). Evidence from expert surveys, opinion polls, and candidate surveys all fail to identify strong distinctions between the two largest parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael (Benoit & Laver, 2003; Gilland Lutz, 2003).

The proximate cause for the party system was the Civil War split, but it was not obvious why the Civil War would define the party system for so long. The Treaty over which the Civil War was fought partitioned the island into a Free State and Northern Ireland, and retained Ireland within the Commonwealth, requiring the newly elected Teachtaí Dála (TDs) to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown. Though the war was bitter, it was short and comparatively contained. The main issue of the split was not partition, but the oath, which became irrelevant for most after 1927 when Fianna Fáil deigned to swear the oath as an ‘empty gesture’. That the party system ‘lasted long after the issues that caused the initial division lost their salience’ (Kissane, 2005: 2) is puzzling. Although some scholars look to traditions in nationalism, they tend to look no further than 30 years. Studies that have attempted to explain the basis for the Treaty split in 1922 have failed to identify any significant variables, including poverty, emigration, land agitation or rural/urban divide, as important (Garvin, 1981; Hart, 1997). Personal loyalties rather than systemic or cleavage differences seem more relevant in explaining the sides in the Civil War (FitzPatrick, 1998).

Additional research suggests that the Civil War, which ended in 1923, represents a longer-term division between two political traditions. According to Prager (1986: 16), one side was rooted

an Irish-Enlightenment tradition, deriving its original insights from the Anglo-Irish ascendency and articulating modern secular aspirations for the Irish nation … On the other side, there was a competing Gaelic-Romantic set of thoughts and beliefs. Its aim was to promote a solidary nation without conflict and disharmony, imbued with a vivid sense of the past in the functioning of the present.

More recent research based on genetic markers and surnames finds evidence for two political groups as well. Byrne and O’Malley (2012) found that of those TDs descended from Anglo-Norman and English families that migrated to Ireland between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries, they are more likely to be Fine Gael representatives. These are assumed to favour the parliamentary tradition. By contrast, Fianna Fáil representatives were more likely to descend from the native Gaelic population, who are likely to hold somewhat more anti-British sentiments, and were slightly poorer. This research suggests that Fianna Fáil may have mobilised voters in the twentieth century that were not engaged previously in electoral politics and that appear to have been more heavily of Gaelic origin. This helps explain why de Valera was explicit in his (and hence Fianna Fáil’s) attachment to the ‘Irish-Ireland’ tradition. Speaking in 1939, he said he ‘would not tomorrow, for the sake of a united Ireland, give up the policy of trying to make this a really Irish Ireland – not by any means … I believe that as long as the language remains you have a distinguishing characteristic of nationality’ (Seanad Debate 7 February 1939, cols. 988–989). Fianna Fáil set about making the Irish-Ireland tradition mainstream in the 1930s.

The distinction between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could be observed in the two parties’ self-images, and particularly their images of each other. Fine Gael continued to see itself as a paragon of probity and the party of law and order. It saw Fianna Fáil as corrupt and willing to bend and break rules. Fianna Fáil saw itself as representing the true Irish person. Its populist vision pitted Fine Gael as elite and out of touch with ordinary voters. Even during the government formation process in 2016, the self-image still appeared relevant, when one prominent Fianna Fáil negotiator claimed that Fianna Fáil preferred pints with the people, whereas he claimed that Fine Gael people preferred to have cocktails in an upmarket Dublin hotel (Loughlin, 2016). Critically for our purposes, this political, not social, division has framed Irish party competition since Fianna Fáil’s founding in large part because of the various strategies it has employed to sustain it.

Organisation and leadership

And Fianna Fáil will survive, as it did before. You can have Boland, but you can’t have Fianna Fáil!

If we are to look at the causes of the durability and success of Fianna Fáil we can look to the party’s early leadership and its organisation, which proved both extremely important and durable, and ensured the party survived the internal dissensions, which would inevitably arise as they do in all large parties. For instance, the 1971 Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis (party conference), which represented the most public manifestation of the split in the party on Northern Ireland was contained with relative ease. Minister Kevin Boland had consistently criticised the party leadership, causing many in the more nationalist wing of the party to cry ‘We want Boland’. In a display of the party’s gift for self-preservation, the party circled the wagons and Patrick Hillery’s famous outburst above indicated that Fianna Fáil saw itself as bigger than any one man. Boland was expelled from the party. He set up a party, Aontacht Éireann, which failed to make any impact. The most prominent of the other rebels at the time, Charles Haughey, took the more conventional route of toeing the party line. The party survived and overcame these internal divisions because the preservation of the party was always an essential goal.

From the party’s earliest days many saw Fianna Fáil as inextricably linked to the political ambitions of Éamon de Valera, and the party’s organisational development mirrors de Valera’s evolving goals. De Valera had managed to assert himself as the leader of the new nationalist political movement, whose original leaders had been shot in 1916. He used his imprisonment to build a myth about him, and with it became the most credible candidate for leadership of Sinn Féin. His election as MP for Clare in 1917 and the party’s overwhelming election victory in late 1918 in southern Ireland gave de Valera the aura of an electoral genius. Subsequently he became head of the provisional government and was largely perceived as Ireland’s leader until the Civil War in 1922. After experiencing defeat in the Civil War, for which he holds great responsibility for causing in the first place, de Valera failed to move Sinn Féin on the policy of the oath. Not to be constrained, de Valera, with the encouragement and help of Lemass (McInerney, 1976), once again found a way to succeed in the midst of failure by setting up a new party in 1926 free of the less power-focused ‘fundamentalists’ in Sinn Féin (Pyne, 1969, 1970). As Murphy and O’Malley discuss in this issue, Fianna Fáil was born with a strong leader and it has rallied around its leader at virtually every stage. Challenges to Jack Lynch, Charles Haughey, and Brian Cowen were all initially rebuffed. Despite varying levels of competition from challengers within the party, these leaders have consistently shaped the party in their image. However, they have not been unconstrained, and as their article shows, even charismatic leaders cannot reimage the party as they please.

The new organisation was built on de Valera’s leadership and the organisational structure of the IRA units. According to an early organiser, Tommy Mullins, almost all of the IRA units joined the party (McInerney, 1974a). Bertie Ahern (2009: 29), a future party leader, traced his own cumann ‘back to a Fenian group in the area from the nineteenth century’. Harry Boland and Seán Lemass maximised loyalty to de Valera as they traversed the country setting up cumainn (branches) in every parish in the country – something achieved in 1933 (Carty, 1983: 106). These tightly knit, activist communities were united in their willingness to support the party leader at all costs in order to win and wield power, further consolidating this leadership-driven party model (Walsh, 1986: 4). This combination of active local units tied to the national party proved successful remarkably quickly. Though facing an election within a year of forming, Fianna Fáil maintained the anti-Treaty vote (of 1923) and made gains particularly in Dublin. It won 44 seats (29 per cent of seats) in the June 1927 election and 57 seats (37 per cent of seats) in the election that September, coming close to Cumann na nGaedheal’s results in both elections (47 and 62 seats, respectively).

The party continued to put an emphasis on building branches around the country, but also set the aim of being able to communicate directly with the people through mass media. Fianna Fáil originally had a weekly newspaper, The Nation, edited by Seán T. O’Kelly, but de Valera wanted a daily paper to give voice to a political movement neglected in the Catholic bourgeois Irish Independent and the Protestant, unionist Irish Times (O’Brien, 2001). De Valera raised funds for the launch of The Irish Press on a trip to the United States in the late 1920s. He gave himself control of the board, and he made some innovations such as putting the news on the front page (before that front pages were reserved for advertising) and had extensive coverage of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). The paper launched in September 1931 reached a circulation of 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• 1. Fianna Fáil: the glue of ambiguity
• 2. A natural governing party: Fianna Fáil in comparative perspective
• 3. Fianna Fáil and the evolution of an ambiguous ideology
• 4. Fianna Fáil: the art of adaptive survival
• 5. From cartel party to traditional membership organisation: the organisational evolution of Fianna Fáil
• 6. The leadership difference? Context and choice in Fianna Fáil’s party leadership
• 7. Fianna Fáil and the professionalisation of political communication in Ireland
• 8. The decline of a dominant political monolith: understanding Fianna Fáil’s vote 1987–2016
• Index