What If? Alternative Views of Twentieth-Century Irish History

An Entertaining and Thought-Provoking Counter-History of Twentieth-Century Ireland

Diarmaid Ferriter

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9780717163915
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Teoria e critica storica

What If? is an entertaining, thoughtful, provocative and original look at some of the milestones of twentieth century Irish history that offers a glimpse of what might have been. We all know that there was nothing inevitable about much of modern Ireland's history. Things could have turned out very differently, so it is natural to wonder what would have happened if certain events had never occurred or happened in a different way. What If? is the thought-provoking, enjoyable and insightful book that explores this conceit as its starting point, asking of key events in twentieth-century Ireland: 'what if?' Based on Diarmaid Ferriter's acclaimed RTÉ Radio One series, the book looks at twenty events in twentieth-century Ireland, each of which was discussed on Ferriter's show with two experts, and speculates on how things might have developed had circumstances been different. In doing so, Ferriter also sheds much new light on what actually did happen, how Ireland changed during the course of the twentieth century and the experiences of those who lived through it. The big questions are tackled: what if there had been no 1916 Rising? What if Ireland had been invaded during World War II? What if there had been no programmes for economic expansion? What if Mary Robinson had not been elected president in 1990? But the book also poses other, less obvious, questions: what if James Joyce and Samuel Beckett had stayed in Ireland; if Britain had blocked Irish immigration in the 1950s; if there had been no Late Late Show or Magill magazine; if Bishop Eamon Casey had never met Annie Murphy; or if John Charles McQuaid had never been Archbishop of Dublin?

What If? Alternative Views of Twentieth-Century Ireland: Table of Contents

Introduction

• What if there had been no Late Late Show?
• What if there had been no pro-life amendment referendum in 1983?
• What if there had been no Magill magazine?
• What if John Charles McQuaid had not been appointed Archbishop of Dublin in 1940?
• What if Ben Dunne had not gone on a golfing trip to Florida in 1992?
• What if Bishop Eamon Casey's secret had not been discovered?
• What if there had been no 1916 Rising?
• What if the Treaty ports had not been returned in 1938?
• What if the Blueshirts had attempted a coup in 1933?
• What if de Valera had stood down as leader of Fianna Fáil in 1948 instead of 1959?
• What if Donogh O'Malley had not introduced free secondary education in 1967?
• What if the Irish Press had not closed down in 1995?
• What if James Joyce and Samuel Beckett had stayed in Ireland?
• What if Frank Duff had not established the Legion of Mary in 1921?
• What if the Jim Duffy tape had not been released during the 1990 presidential election?
• What if Proportional Representation had been abolished in 1959 or 1968?
• What if T. K. Whitaker had not been appointed Secretary of the Department of Finance in 1956?
• What if the members of U2 had gone to different schools in the 1970s?
• What if Britain had imposed restrictions on Irish immigration in the 1950s?
• What if Noël Browne had not been involved in Irish politics?

Chapter 1

What if there had been no Late Late Show?

On New Year’s Eve 1961, the first broadcast of Ireland’s domestic television service featured addresses by the President of Ireland, Eamon de Valera, and the primate of all Ireland, Cardinal D’Alton. The Cardinal blessed the station with the following words:

On this New Year’s morning, I ask you all to join with me in praying that God may abundantly bless Telefís Éireann, may the Holy Spirit guide the directors in their work, so that this new and important venture in our national life [may] become an asset and an ornament to our country.

Both men issued warnings about the potential negative effects of television, indicative of an apprehension felt by many. Modern media, they seemed to suggest, had the potential to disturb an isolated nation on the fringe of Europe. D’Alton mentioned the possibility of addiction to the new medium, while de Valera, then aged 79, had the following to say:

I must admit that sometimes when I think of television and radio and their immense power, I feel somewhat afraid. Like atomic energy, it can be used for incalculable good, but it can also do irreparable harm. Never before was there in the hands of men an instrument so powerful to influence the thoughts and actions of the multitude. The persistent policy pursued over radio and television, apart from imparting knowledge, can build up the character of the whole people, inducing a sturdiness and vigour and confidence. On the other hand, it can lead to demoralisation and decadence and disillusion.¹

Initially, the television service was largely confined to Leinster, but growth throughout all of Ireland followed rapidly, and by the end of 1965, it was estimated that there were 350,000 homes in the country with televisions, representing more than half the households nationwide. There were a few television programmes that seemed to encourage the ventilation of problems that had long gone unmentioned, in public at least. So animated did one politician—the redoubtable Fine Gael TD, Oliver J. Flanagan—become, that he famously complained, ‘there was no sex in Ireland before television’.²

The Late Late Show will forever be associated with encouraging more frank and open discussion in this regard. What began in 1962 as a summer-filler show, hosted by Gay Byrne, went on to become the longest-running chat show in the world. Prior to the Late Late, Byrne had worked at Granada Television and presented Open House on BBC; he was utterly professional, did not indulge in the drinking that was common in media circles, and preferred to stay, in the words of Michael Parkinson, ‘on the fringe of everything’, when it came to socialising.

Byrne himself recalled that the first four Late Late programmes were ‘utterly detested and hated’;³ after its initial run, Byrne was replaced by Frank Hall, who proved a disappointment, and Byrne agreed to return, on the condition that he could also produce the show.

Various, often extravagant, claims have been made about its impact. There is much truth in Byrne’s own simple contention, that ‘we looked at new ways of entertaining and that was it’,⁴ and he certainly did not see himself as remotely socially radical. One of the strengths of the show was its format, to which Irish audiences responded very well; they could watch discussions and debates in a free-flowing manner, much as they might observe at home or in the pub. Essentially what Byrne was doing was experimenting, by redeploying the American chat-show format, but with a native twist, or an element of seeming ‘adhoc-ery’, in which all three elements were crucial: the presenter, the panel and the audience. But the seeming casualness belied the careful planning and co-ordination that went into the show. This was ultimately about show business, with the row or heated discussion coming at the end; it was also risky, in the sense that it was always a gamble to have an unedited live show, a risk few twenty-first-century hosts will take or, indeed, be allowed to take.

Was it really the great moderniser of Irish society? What if there had been no Late Late Show? Would we still be in the dark?

The two guests on this programme, which opened with a clip that enlivened many people’s weekend (‘Ladies and gentlemen, to whom it concerns . . . ’) were novelist Colm Tóibín, who had previously written about the show and Byrne’s impact in the 1980s, suggesting, ‘he is like the priest who manages the affairs of the parish. Behind the mystery of the mass lies cold hard work. He is generally quiet spoken, but he is also ruthless; he wants things done’,⁵ and feminist June Levine, author of the acclaimed Sisters, the story of the personal voyage of an Irish feminist, who had worked as a researcher on the Late Late Show in the early years.

I was anxious that this show would not become a fawning Late Late love-in, and would address both the strengths and weaknesses of the show, and, indeed, of its host, though using the word ‘weaknesses’ in relation to Gay Byrne is still regarded as slightly blasphemous by many. It is a measure of his iconic status that few will utter a bad word about him, and, to his credit, his broadcasting skills have not been bettered. Even his critics would acknowledge that, despite what they may have thought of him, he always had the trump card of being able to present them with the biggest publicity coup they could get—to be featured as a guest. In 1984, for example, Tony Gregory, Mick Rafferty and Fergus McCabe of the North City Centre Community Action Project criticised Byrne for constantly emphasising on his radio programme the negative side of parts of the inner city, but Gregory acknowledged, ‘he also presented us with the Late Late Show which was the biggest thing we’d had.’⁶

There was also a certain insecurity that pervaded Byrne’s relationship with RTÉ; for most of the time, he was on three-month contracts, was refused significant pay rises, lived a very regimented life, and, in his own words, until a very late stage in his career, when competition opened up in Irish television, he ‘never felt secure in an industry that was run as a monopoly . . . if you took a break, someone could come in and be better than you’.⁷

In the midst of debate about the impact of his show, Byrne had consistently maintained that he was facilitator rather than innovator; that he could not impose a discussion on a society that was not ready for it. On the face of it, this seems to suggest generous modesty on Byrne’s part; but it could also have been defensive—Byrne always had to protect his various, often vast, viewing constituencies, so the idea of him as ‘host’ and not ‘instigator’ was important, and rarely did his mask or his professionalism slip. As early as 1972, he had suggested that his success was a result not of his own vision, but of observing the skills of others: ‘I think it could be said that Eamonn Andrews is responsible for most of it’.⁸ Most people born in Ireland from the 1950s on will remember their first opportunity to watch the Late Late. Tóibín remembered that, growing up in Wexford in the 1960s, the children of the house

were banned from watching it. I was born in 1955 and it was the one thing you were not allowed to see and it was the one thing you kept asking about. Despite all the cartoons, all the other things that were on, it was the thing you wanted most to see, because I think all the adults watched it in a very serious way. The door was closed and the children were sent to bed and as you got to a certain age, you’d say, ‘When I’m what age will I be able to watch the Late Late Show?’ which was a sort of rite of passage. The first time I was brought down from my bed to watch it was not when an enormous sort of cataclysm took place in Irish society, but when Lieutenant Gerard from The Fugitive, who’d been searching for the one-armed man all the time, when he appeared on the Late Late Show, it was felt he would be suitable for me. But once it was over, you never knew, because they never announced in advance who was coming on next and it could be a nun who didn’t believe in being a nun or it could be someone talking about sex and there had never been talk about sex in our house. I remember sometime, I must have been let watch it from the age of 11 or 12, but I remember one night when Conor Cruise O’Brien and Máire Mhac an tSaoi came on together and Máire said that there were couples who had been married for many years who had never seen one another naked and, I can tell you, the silence . . . now I’m talking about an extended family, not the nuclear family, but aunts, uncles, maybe even a visitor, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, all of us watched—‘Máire Mhac an tSaoi said “naked” on the Late Late Show!’ There weren’t headlines the next day, but it was that sort of silence that caused people really to worry. You couldn’t turn it off—no one had a zapper—you could have run over to turn it off but that would have been considered square. So it began for me by being forbidden, and then became immensely interesting with great moments of pure embarrassment and, as I say, a great amount of Hollywood in it—any actor who was passing through town would be on it as well, so the show business and whatever things that were unsayable in Irish life were mixed together.

Any discussion of sex was, of course, as mesmerising to the audience as it was uncomfortable. There was a simple reason for this, maintained Tóibín: there were so many people ‘who had never heard about sex’; indeed, he went so far as to suggest that there was a whole generation of people who would have lived and died in twentieth-century Ireland without ever having heard any discussion about sex if there had been no Late Late Show. To that extent, at least, Oliver J. Flanagan was absolutely right. But Tóibín also remembered programmes on issues such as compulsory Irish, and the emergence of young intellectuals like Garret FitzGerald, who, perhaps, in contrast to the previous generation of public intellectuals and politicians, were only delighted to hot foot it down to RTÉ to get a slice of the action, particularly because there ‘was nothing that wasn’t up for grabs’.

I asked June Levine about comments she had made in her autobiography concerning Gay Byrne’s attitude to women. She conceded that he was a chauvinist:

He was never a pig, but he was a bit chauvinistic in those days and he improved as time went on. He was the first person to give us feminists a serious platform and he gave us the whole show, and Senator Mary Robinson came in to chair it and it went very well. Every issue was aired, and I think the wonderful thing about the Late Late Show was that the people of Ireland could participate—it was their first platform, if you like, because no matter what show came after that, the magic of the show, for me, was always the unexpected. You had panellists, you had extended panels in the audience and you never knew what these ordinary people of Ireland, who’d come in from wherever, were going to say about any subject. On the subject of the women’s movement, it got to every woman in Ireland, so that later, a couple of weeks later, when we all met in the Mansion House for our very first public meeting, not everyone could get in, it was so jammed.

But was it the case that, with the research team, there was an element of hostility towards radicals?

If the item was going to be interesting, if it was going to get people talking, I don’t think Gay would have given a hoot what we were going to talk about. For instance, I did a show on an unmarried mother—the first unmarried mother on Irish television, and she told her whole story from start to finish and people were absolutely amazed at this, and I’m sure Colm would have been sent to bed! It was an amazing thing in Ireland at that time, and we’re talking now about the 1970s, when, you know, so many Irish women had gone to England pregnant to return ‘virgins’ once again. And, yet, the unmarried-mother programme raised a huge fuss.

Aside from sex, and women’s liberation, what were the other issues that Tóibín remembered?

Well, there were figures like Fergal O’Connor who were, I suppose, liberal priests, who were constantly on the show. And there was great debate at the time—it seems like a crazy debate now—about compulsory Irish; figures like John B. Keane on the show and, oddly enough, somebody like Garret FitzGerald, really making his name on the Late Late Show, coming on constantly, talking about various issues [Levine intervened to remind that ‘he ran in from his fireside when the women were on’]. Yes, and of course, you’d always have members of your family who wouldn’t like one of them. Fergal O’Connor would come on—‘Oh, that fella’s on again’ or ‘Look at him!’—you know, the people of Ireland developed a relationship with the show and, of course, at the beginning, there was an amazing number run by Ulick O’Connor and Denis Franks. Franks had a more English accent, Ulick a more Dublin one, and they went at each other, and of course people had never heard that level of (a) eloquence and (b) of every issue being up for grabs. There were people, incidentally, who never came on. Charles Haughey sidled on once on a programme about the Dubliners, to shake hands with Ronnie Drew, but he never sat in the chair to be asked the questions. In other words, there were certain people who wouldn’t do it because it was unpredictable. I remember when Des O’Malley went to do it, and thought he could launch the Progressive Democrats on it, and it didn’t quite work for him. You could never judge it.

Did Levine believe politicians were scared of it?

They weren’t as scared as they would be now. I think that was the wonderful thing about the Late Late. People were innocent. We didn’t have multi-channel television. People hadn’t travelled a lot, air travel wasn’t cheap. So, people, including politicians, were quite innocent. It was amazing after you were on the Late Late to walk down Grafton Street the next day, and be stopped every ten minutes and people arguing with you or disagreeing with you. They didn’t know that was going to happen to them. But nowadays they do, and I would think that people are much more careful now.

But in terms of arguments and combativeness, did Byrne have the instincts of a Rottweiler? Levine put it simply: ‘When he was cross, like most of us, he could be pretty cross’

Tóibín elaborated:

He did an amazing attack on John Feeney, for example, who came on as a sort of left-wing student who had been picketing churches. He had long hair, sitting on the panel, and Gay Byrne went for him. And he went for him in a way which was unusual for him. In other words, he started a tirade of his own.

Levine counteracted with the suggestion that:

I think he had this magical way of being able to pick up what the ordinary person at their fireside was thinking. You can be sure that if he attacked Feeney, then people in your family were ready to do the same and were cheering him on. Because that was the wonderful thing about the show. He did speak for the people of Ireland. And he gave them a voice. There were many, many issues and we had to know about them. I really firmly believe that the Late Late did Ireland a service. We hadn’t talked about anything important to each other. We hadn’t discussed any of the important things in life to each other or with each other. You couldn’t talk about sex; you couldn’t talk seriously about spirituality. You couldn’t talk about changes in the church. I remember interviewing Hans Küng, who was probably my favourite interviewee of all time, and he was like a breath of fresh air and he was on the Late Late, and the wonderful part about any show was that the audience could put a hand up and be heard and these were drawn from the plain people of Ireland. It wasn’t rehearsed or scripted. I remember absolutely and clearly it wasn’t rehearsed. What happened was that I went and interviewed somebody and talked to Gay about it and wrote down cogent points on a card and then he took that, and then the next thing I saw was when he had the guest on the show and he spoke to the guest and referred to the cards. Now, he very seldom departed from the cards. He had these bits of information there and we had what we called an extended panel. Some people called them plants—they weren’t plants; they were people who were interested in the subject or educated about the subject and they were invited to come along and then the rest of the audience were just people who had tickets, and you never knew what was going to come out.

Tóibín observed, ‘His writ...