Bertie Ahern: The Man Who Blew the Boom: Power & Money (16 page)

As the 1977 general election approached there was just such a debate within Fianna Fáil in Dublin Finglas. (The constituency had just been created and would be abolished before the next general election.) The sitting Fianna Fáil
TD
for Finglas was Jim Tunney. Danny Bell, a local councillor since 1974, was the second party candidate in the constituency. The National Executive decided that a third candidate should be added to the ticket to soak up votes in the Drumcondra area, and Ahern was chosen. At the time, as Paddy Duffy pointed out, no-one knew that the Fianna Fáil election manifesto, including as it did an over-generous series of pledges designed by the Trinity College economist Martin O’Donoghue, was going to lead to a landslide for the party.

Bertie really got on the ticket as the sweeper, as a young lad who definitely had no chance whatever, because he was so far away from these people [Tunney and Bell]. He got on the ticket and that was that. And what nobody realised was that Bertie had talents that even he didn’t realise he had. That’s one of the great things in life, that if you get the opportunity you can show your paces, but very often you don’t get the opportunity—you never get the chance . . . I and the others were very happy that this young turk had been selected. We thought it was hilarious in some ways. Bertie set about getting a couple of his friends [involved], basically friends who worked with him or who were in All Hamptons, or friends of the family. I might have written some of the literature—the brochures and that sort of thing.

Joe Tierney, a Cabra activist with Fianna Fáil whose first involvement with politics was in support of Vivion de Valera in a 1945 by-election, when Tierney was eight, said Tunney was paranoid about Bell making inroads into his support in Finglas. ‘Ahern was only brought in because his name began with an A, and he would be over Danny Bell on the ballot paper,’ he said. A one-time member of the National Executive who was to have a stormy relationship with Ahern, Tierney said he took against Ahern from the start. ‘Because I saw him operating in Finglas in 1977. He would go into a neighbourhood as soon as it was canvassed by Fianna Fáil, and turned it around so it was just for him. He was never a party man.’

Ahern set up an operations base in the front room of his parents’ two-up, two-down home. According to Duffy he and his team of supporters devised a system for getting elected: canvass, canvass, canvass. They made the occasional foray into Finglas, which Tunney and his camp did not appreciate. On the morning of the poll Ahern and his supporters took the unusual step of conducting a leaflet drop in the hours before breakfast—something that was to become a feature of Ahern’s campaigns. In those days canvassing on polling day at the polling stations was still allowed, and Ahern’s supporters continued to work up to the time the polls closed. The next day the count took place in Bolton Street Technical College. At 8:30 p.m. the returning officer announced that Ahern had reached the quota and had taken the second seat, which Bell might have been expecting. According to Duffy,

it came as a great delight to us, of course, and as a great shock to everybody, that this tousle-haired young man was elected that nobody had ever heard of. That was the beginning, if you like, of the official road.

In his memoirs Ahern said he made his way back up to Church Avenue for a hug from his mother and a firm handshake from his father. Then it was down to the Cat and Cage, which was packed with cheering supporters, and later on to Santry Stadium, where more well-wishers were gathered. It was the early hours of the morning before he got back to his Artane home.

According to Duffy, within months of the election he and others met in the Ahern household to discuss with the new
TD
what he would try to achieve with the power he now held. As he tells it, there was no particular political philosophy, set of policies or national objectives that galvanised the group. Rather, the focus was on career advancement, with the question of policies being placed in that context. Those at the meeting included Kett, Burke, Chris Wall (active in the Clonliffe Harriers, based in Santry Stadium, where Ahern’s brother Maurice was a leading light) and Paul Kiely (who worked in the Mater Hospital).

It was totally new to us. None of us had been this close to a
TD
, and the question was what to do with this new-found position, which opened up endless possibilities, none of which we could ascertain. We felt there was great potential in it, but we actually didn’t know what that potential was. It was an opportunity to do something, but what we didn’t know at that stage. As a result of that particular meeting, I remember typing up a four or five-page document called ‘How to become Taoiseach in Twenty Years’, and what we had in that document was the result of our discussion—how we thought that Bertie could be promoted to become junior minister, senior minister and then Taoiseach. I have searched high and low, and I can’t find it. I definitely had it until I moved house eight or nine years ago. It was a simple document, but it indicated that from that early time he and those of us around him saw the possibility of Bertie becoming Taoiseach.

To the best of my memory, it really was a programme to become involved in key issues and to bring the best people possible around him to work with him on the key issues, and by doing that to gain his name and acclaim, and then, with the happy bounce of the ball—because we all realised that politics is a very uncertain sport—that he would get promotion and he would make it. One of the early ones that we mentioned, which was very clear to us, was industrial relations. Which was an absolute disaster at that stage, with millions of work days being lost every single year.

Ahern was a member of the Federated Workers’ Union of Ireland and found the workings of trade unions and industrial relations generally of interest. ‘Bertie said from early on that he was interested in that,’ said Duffy. He said he could recall discussing trade union matters with Ahern in the very earliest period of his political career, ‘scoping out’ the whole movement and identifying who the main players were. ‘Bertie deliberately got to know and befriend, and understand, most of the trade union leaders. That was a very deliberate policy.’

Ahern was to play a role in the rationalisation of the trade union movement, while the creation of social partnership would be a core element of his political achievements; but Duffy said this wasn’t planned. What was discussed at the early stage was more ‘inchoate’, he said. ‘The germ of the idea, the necessity of going towards those sort of objectives, was there and was spoken about.’

In his memoirs Ahern wrote that there was no truth in the story that within weeks of his being elected a twenty-year plan was drawn up that envisaged his becoming Taoiseach.

There is a curious sense of resentment that emerges at times from Ahern’s memoirs. He wrote of going to Leinster House for the first time and having to find for himself what desk he could use, of not being congratulated by anyone or ‘even’ having his photograph taken. In the period 1977–9 the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, never said one word to him, Ahern wrote. Kind words were said by the Labour Party’s Brendan Corish and Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave, and this was, he wrote, his induction into the ‘oldest rule’ in politics: politicians in other parties are the opposition, but your real enemies are in your own party.

When Lynch appointed Tunney a junior minister in his Government, Tunney had to give up his seat on the Dublin City Council, but he was unhappy at the prospect of Ahern, who had done so surprisingly well in the general election, replacing him. Tunney tried unsuccessfully to block him. Ahern took particular pleasure in topping the poll in the 1979 local elections. By then the popularity that had brought Fianna Fáil such a landslide victory in 1977 had evaporated. The oil crisis had thrown the economies of the Western world into shock and the Irish economy into a tailspin. The national finances quickly deteriorated, and there was an outbreak of bitter industrial strife. Party backbenchers grew uneasy, with mutterings about Lynch and his leadership. Lynch had been a compromise candidate for the party leadership at the time of the resignation of Seán Lemass, and his elevation parked for a time the contest between Haughey and George Colley. Ahern in his memoirs wrote that, at an event in November 1979, Colley came over to him and said hello, the first time he had done so since Ahern’s election as a
TD
two-and-a-half years earlier. Colley was in the neighbouring constituency of Dublin North-Central but had ‘not once’ spoken to him until then, Ahern wrote. He decided that Colley’s motive was that he wanted to curry favour in the coming leadership battle.

Ahern saw much in Colley’s background that he admired: he was old Fianna Fáil, his father having been involved in the Easter Rising and the
IRA
. He had attended ‘Joey’s’ school, run by the Christian Brothers in Fairview, not far from Drumcondra. Yet he always felt, he wrote, that, when he was speaking to him, Colley was ‘looking down’ on him. Ahern did not perceive any such sense of superiority emanating from Haughey, who had grown up in a modest home in the north Dublin suburb of Donnycarney. Indeed, they may well have shared a sense of resentment towards those they considered to have been born into greater privilege. Haughey’s father had been a member of the old
IRA
, had joined the army but then had been invalided out. Haughey’s very successful ministerial career had suffered a severe setback as a result of the Arms Crisis in 1970, which centred on the importing of guns for the Provisional
IRA
. Ahern said he supported Haughey over Colley because of the superiority of the former’s ministerial record, though it is likely that the matter was more complex. Paddy Duffy emphasised the ‘republican’ issue.

It was quite clear that our preferred side of that equation was Haughey. None of this was worked out: it was just the way things were. From early on, Chris Wall and Bertie in particular would always have mentioned Haughey as being the most republican of the two. It was unspoken in many ways, but there was never any question of our giving our loyalty to Colley over Haughey. It was always Haughey.

Ahern’s ability to ‘smell the wind’ may also have been a factor. The 1977 general election was a landslide for Fianna Fáil, giving it a comfortable absolute majority in the Dáil—the last it would see in the period of Ahern’s political career. Geraldine Kennedy was at the count centre in the
RDS
in Dublin and came upon a happy-looking Haughey. She asked him why he looked so pleased, given the huge number of deputies who had just been elected under Lynch’s leadership. ‘But they’re all my people,’ replied a smiling Haughey. Kennedy quickly secured a commitment from him that if he became leader he would grant her his first interview as Taoiseach.

According to Duffy, when he and Ahern were considering any matter they would keep in mind three aspects: the national agenda, the party agenda and the local agenda. It was critical for the progress of Ahern’s career, Duffy said, that each of these was taken into account when deciding on Ahern’s moves as his career unfolded. ‘You had to keep position on all those to keep your momentum moving and to try and move up the ladder.’ There was a very strong focus on getting things done.

Like everything else in Ireland, perhaps, we spent not enough time thinking about what we should be doing: we spent a huge amount of time trying to do it. Because everything takes so much time. Getting political preferment, in particular, is a big job.

Ahern’s election had been a surprise in 1977. He kept his head down in the Dáil and negotiated the rise of Haughey and Haughey’s eclipse of Colley without creating enemies. (In his memoirs he said that he acted much as he had done when he had entered the tough environs of St Aidan’s as one of its youngest pupils: he kept his head down and observed.) His primary concern was to solidify his support in his constituency, recognising that all political careers are founded on an ability to get elected. He established a well-run ‘ward-boss’ system, a network whereby each road or district in his constituency had someone who operated as the eyes and ears of the organisation and as a conduit for communications with Ahern and his closest associates. All the real or perceived needs or concerns of constituents were given attention, and in return Ahern hoped for electoral support.

Changes to constituency boundaries in 1980 saw Ahern end up in Dublin Central, one of the poorest, if not the poorest, constituency in the country. He was no longer in a contest with Tunney but was up against Haughey’s leadership rival, George Colley. According to the former political editor of the
Irish Times
, Denis Coughlan, Haughey put Ahern into Dublin Central so he could ‘shaft’ Colley and thereby damage his prospects in the party leadership stakes.

Gerald Kenny was a member of the Thomas Davis Cumann at about this time. Centred in the Berkeley Road and Phibsborough area, it was the strongest and largest cumann in the constituency, according to Kenny. An employee of a security firm, who later set up his own business, Kenny joined Fianna Fáil in 1972, having been involved in providing security to the 1971 ard-fheis, where tensions were high as a result of the Arms Crisis. His parents had been in the party. He said he liked, and likes, Ahern but was a supporter of Colley. He agrees with Coughlan’s view on what Haughey wanted Ahern to achieve in the constituency.

Bertie put Colley in second place in the first election. Then opposed the nomination of his widow, Mary Colley. Bertie would try not to let it be seen that he was trying to shaft someone. But Haughey wanted any of the Colleys out of it.

Ahern and his supporters knew that Colley was a formidable opponent. According to Duffy, as the 1981 election approached, the ‘Ahern army’ was approximately 100-strong. The election would see ‘the survival of the fittest.’ The ‘army’ was almost professional in its drive, he said, and was determined that every door in the constituency would be knocked on three times during the campaign. The plan was to canvass the whole constituency, even though this broke the rules governing how it was to be divided up with Colley.