‘IT AIN’T NECESSARILY SO’ by Donal Kennedy

Not even when the newspaper in question is the Irish Times. Nor its feature “An Irishman’s Diary” ” when its guest diarist is John Horgan.

John Horgan’s journalistic career dates back to 1962. He has sat in Seanad Eireann, been elected to Dail Eireann once (in 1977, for Labour), has been a Professor of Journalism at Dublin City University, and was the first Press Ombudsman. Amongst other books he has written a biography

of Sean Lemass.

On February 9th as guest diarist he recalled an occasion when a former President of Ireland, the incumbent President and two Presidents-to-be, were in the same place at the same time. The place was Kilcoole,County Wicklow, the date was August 7 1966, and Sean T O’Ceallaigh, Eamon

de Valera, Erskine Childers (Jr) and Cearbhall O Dalaigh were there to commemorate the landing of rifles from the yacht “Chota” on 2 August 1914.

I was surprised that Horgan reported that O Ceallaigh was in 1914 living in Roundwood, in Wicklow, well removed from events in Dublin City. At the time O’Ceallaigh was an Alderman on Dublin Corporation, for Inns Quay Ward, having been elected (for Sinn Fein) in 1906. He was the Manager for the Gaelic League Journal An Claidheamh Soluis, a member of the IRB, and a bachelor. He did indeed live in a fine property in rural Roundwood in 1966.But I think his activities in his early years tied him to the city. His family had a fine town house – “27 Sraid Rutlainn Uachtarach” and he tells us in his memoirs that Patrick and Willie Pearse stayed there on the night of Easter Sunday 1916, hours before Insurrection. In English, the address

would be rendered as 27 Upper Rutland Street. His people were shoemakers and quite comfortable.  I wrote to the Irish Times noting the discrepancy but my letter wasn’t printed.

Though I didn’t advise the paper, I found a more serious, because more calculated fault in Mr Horgan’s report. Horgan was covering the commemoration for the Irish Times, accompanied by a Canadian journalist on her first visit to Ireland. Apparently Mr Horgan had identified “Sean T”, ” Dev”, and Erskine Childers (Jr):  “At one stage, during a hitch in the proceedings, my Canadian friend pointed to a small group of people trying to fix the hiccupping public-address system and asked:’Who is that little man in his shirt sleeves trying to fix the microphone?’  Blissfully unable to predict what was to happen in December 1974, when Erskine Childers was to suffer an untimely death, or in October 1976 when as president he was to resign in highly charged and controversial circumstances, I told her: ‘ That’s Cearbhall O’Dalaigh, the Chief Justice.He lives just up the road.’ “

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One might think from that report that O Dalaigh’s resignation was done under a cloud. The facts are that the then Minister of Defence referred to the President, Ireland’s First Citizen and Commander-in-Chief of the Defence Forces, as a “Thundering Ballocks” to soldiers and senior

officers, because the President had conscientiously referred a  Bill restricting civil rights to the Supreme Court for its opinion of its constitutionality. Instead of having the Minister taken into custody by the Barracks Orderly Officer and lodged in the Guardroom until he had cleared his head, it seems the officers present applauded him. When the Fine Gael Taoiseach and the Fine-Gael/Labour Coalition Cabinet backed the loutish Defence Minister, President O Dalaigh resigned in order to preserve the dignity of the State’s highest office. As a Labour Candidate for Dail Eireann in the 1977 General Election, Horgan was very lucky to be elected, for the voters took their revenge on the Coalition, throwing it out of office..

 At least one fine example of sleight of hand, legerdemain, or three-card-trickery appears in Horgan’s biography of Sean Lemass. He writes: “De Valera and his TDs stayed away from the session of the Dail called to ratify the Treaty on the 14th January.”

There was no meeting of Dail Eireann on the 14th January 1922. Dail Eireann had no competence to ratify the Articles of Agreement signed in London the previous December. London did not recognise the authority of Dail Eireann.The body which purported to “ratify the Treaty” was the one envisaged by London’s “Government of Ireland Act 1920” – “The Parliament of Southern Ireland”, and the meeting of 14th January was its one quorate meeting. In his biography of Arthur Griffith, Padraic  Colum says that  at that one meeting more Irish was spoken than at any one meeting of Dail Eireann.

Reading that,  I remembered that the veteran republican Ernie O’Malley had been an advisor to John Ford in the making of The Quiet Man. I wondered if one of its funniest and most poignant scenes  was inspired by the rum Parliament of Southern Ireland. Remember Mary Kate Thornton (nee Danaher) explaining to Father Lonergan how her bridegroom, Sean Thornton, had been refused the enjoyment of his whole  entitlement?..She was too embarrassed, too ashamed, to confess, in a  very widely understood language, that he had to make do with a sleeping bag rather than his place in the marriage  bed. So she made her confession Irish.

It seems to me that MALA CODLATA could represent SAORSTAT EIREANN, and Ireland was not to have her whole republican  entitlement.