02.05.06

Garret The Good

Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 2:12 pm by Sarah

One of my heroes, he turns 80 next week. You know there are some people, say like, Charlie McCreevy whom I personally like but can’t abide his politics. There are others who are charming and impressive but you know they are shits. But Garret is adorable, clever, moral, and honest. He lacks malice; admits to his mistakes (which were always made with the best of intentions).

Kathy Sheridan did a great piece in the IT on Saturday. Here are some extracts:

“For much of their married lives, Garret and Joan shared a house with some or other of their adult, married children, mainly for financial reasons (politics had a decidedly deleterious effect on the FitzGerald household budget). His description in his 1991 autobiography of the cramped, two-roomed accommodation, complete with corridor kitchen and rising damp, that comprised his and Joan’s quarters in a large Palmerston Road house during his years as taoiseach makes salutary reading for anyone with a fixed view of grasping politicians.

The modest red-brick houses he lives among now may be worth a fortune in terms of location, but fall a long way short of Gandon mansions in scale and status. Then again, the social assurance that comes with being the issue of generations of an educated, if occasionally financially embarrassed elite, probably obviates the need for such showy accessories.”

and

“There are things I could have done better. I had three great careers, with Aer Lingus, UCD, and as foreign minister – but it was downhill after that.”

He admits to making a mistake on the abortion referendum, which led to 20 years of bitter divisiveness, “although opposing it wouldn’t have made any difference. We changed the wording to ensure we wouldn’t have a mess, but the bishops thought they knew more than the attorney general. I always felt that the fact that they wouldn’t talk to me was because they knew they wouldn’t be able to challenge my reasoning”.

He remembers the “truly worrying period” in 1974-75 when, amid hunger strikes, riots in Dublin and the “financial situation”, Britain was threatening to withdraw from Northern Ireland “under what they called a negotiated independence. We hadn’t the capacity to deal with that . . . ”

But being in government with no money to spend “was the worst”. He recalls coming into office in 1981, and discovering on the way back from the Áras, “before I even formed a government, that the country was virtually bankrupt. The rate of borrowing for the next year, unless we tackled it, would be over 21 per cent of GNP, which was about seven times what it ought to be. And we inherited that mess from Fianna Fáil”.

“We knew things weren’t good, but had no idea it was as bad as that because they had not told us the truth. They just changed the figures, which has never been done before or since. It was terrible, it really was. The figures were phoney.”

Far from pursuing the social reforms begun in the 1970s, the new coalition’s only option was to cut ever deeper.

“Making cuts wasn’t my forte. I should be a great prime minister now, with all the money,” he says a little wistfully. What would he do with it? “I would concentrate on the social area, social disadvantage.”

When I think about Garret, I can’t help thinking about all the horrible Fianna Failers who sneered at him for the 80′s. Charlie was the cool man with loadsa money (oh, cos he was such a clever business man – and we knew that was bullshit back then so don’t give me the wilful ignorance bullshit of the FnFers). I’d like anyone who voted or supported FF in the 80′s and who reads this blog to grovel and admit to being grossly and wilfully in error and apologise deeply to al FGers who had to put up with the abuse and wish the lovely Garret a happy 80th birthday and another 15 years.

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