SIDEKICKS AND SIDEWINDERS by Donal Kennedy

“HAUGHEY SIDEKICK AND FF GURU FOR OVER THREE DECADES” ran an IRISH TIMES headline on Saturday 16 January.

That had me gobsmacked. The IRISH TIMES, once the house journal of the landed Protestant ascendancy, and the “mouthpiece” of Dublin Castle during the Tan War, mimicking the prose style of Elmore Leonard and Mickey Spillane. How are the mighty fallen!

The headline was the start of an Obituary of a sophisticated, urbane and stylish citizen, learned in the history of his own and other countries, and in Irish and other languages, who had been Haughey’s Press Officer when Charlie was Taoiseach and Fianna Fail Director of Elections when the Party, led by Bertie Ahern was returned to power in three successive general elections. Well might it be said of him “Ni feicfir a leitheid aris.”  Looking further afield to Britain, I can’t remember a Government spin doctor to compare with P.J.Mara.

Tony Blair’s  Alastair Campbell could be a rough customer and Thatcher’s Bernard Ingham prided himself on his thuggishness.Ingham’s photograph on the cover of his memoir “Kill the Messenger” is calculated to put the frighteners on a prize-fighter. P.J. Mara, on the other hand, charmed his party’s fiends and foes alike, once joking that Fianna Fail had “Uno Duce, Una Voce”. His wit might be contrasted with another man who held his position, who boasted that he had a “spine of steel, and balls of Iron.” You wouldn’t mind so much if the Man With The Iron Balls” hadn’t got the pneumatic surnname Dunlop.

Anyway P.J.Mara came from humble beginnings, his father a garda, died when he was a child. He was taught, through Irish, by the Christian Brothers, at Colaiste Mhuire in Dublin, and did not turn out an embittered anti-national polemicist like Sean O’Donnell, whose memories of suffering corporal punishment in the same school in 1966  continue to colour his take on the Rising of 1916, and merit many column inches in The Irish Times.

O’Donnell had a “Rite and Reason” piece in that paper last week and a letter yesterday, 18th January.

Now sidewinders and sidekicks are, I believe, from the other side of the Atlantic. Indeed sidewinders are said to be a subspecies of rattlesnake from the Californian desert. But I can think of one spin doctor, another American term, as toxic as any snake.

Joe Haines was Harold Wilson’s Press Secretary, and later the sycophantic “Sidekick” of Robert Maxwell. When the leftwing Labour MP Eric Heffer was dying of cancer, Haines launched a bitter attack on him, when John Major was welcoming the MP back in the Commons.

Of course, Ireland doesn’t have snakes and legend has it that they were all banished by St Patrick. But the more I read the IRISH TIMES the less I am inclined to credit that story. However I like to look on the bright side and salute those such as P.J.Mara who contributed to the gaiety of our nation.