Come Here To Me!

ADW's excellent take on Bertie Ahern.

I’ve a bit in the latest CrisisJam over on the excellent Politico.ie looking at the historical context of the collapse of Fianna Fail’s support in the capital. You can read it here.

Fianna Fail, Sean Lemass told a gathering of youth party members in Inchicore in November 1947, had “… more wage-earners in its ranks than any Labour Party, and more farmers than any Farmers Party.”

The class make-up of the party in Dublin was always a matter of considerable pride, when coupled with the historic roots of the party in the anti-treaty IRA. In 1954, when a young Charles Haughey was put before the people as a part of the “New Guard” of the party, he shared space on his inaugural election leaflet with Oscar Traynor and Harry Colley. Traynor was among the most highly regarded of the ‘men of Easter Week’, serving in the Metropole Hotel with the GPO Garrison during the rising. Harry Colley, the leaflet noted, had been “..left for dead at a Dublin street barricade.” Almost 40 years on from the rising, Fianna Fail was still presenting itself as the party, and indeed the vanguard, of Irish republicanism. New candidates like Haughey often came from the same bloodline as many of the ‘Old Guard’.

The Fianna Fail election leaflet mentioned in the piece, introducing a certain Charles Haughey to the fold, was uploaded here on Come Here To Me in the past. You can read it here.

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