Judging Lemass: The Measure of the Man

Tom Garvin

Royal Irish Academy, €30

Of all heads of government since independence, Sean Lemass is now the most universally acclaimed. He is hailed as the economic saviour who dismantled De Valera's dreary paradise, and ushered in the modern world by transforming a sclerotic education system, paving the way for Europe and initiating an era of good feelings with Northern Ireland.

"The promotion of a politics of the practical and a rhetoric of reality," concludes Tom Garvin, "may have been the most lasting and the most important of his many legacies to the people of Ireland."

The persuasive testimony of men such as Dr Whitaker, who worked with Lemass, bear witness to his ability, as well as his single-minded dedication to his work and to the national interest.

Starting life as a violent and irreconcilable Republican, he was a prime mover in redirecting most of that movement into constitutional channels. More than most of his colleagues, he transcended the bitterness of the civil war, in the wake of which his brother was murdered by agents of the Free State government.

He was not identified with the now unfashionable policies of compulsory Irish and subservience to the Catholic Church. It seems that there is no evidence to support charges of corruption made in his lifetime by responsible political opponents such as James Dillon -- certainly Lemass did not die a rich man.

All this emerges clearly in this splendid book, written by one of the most acute observers and incisive chroniclers of modern Ireland. It is handsomely illustrated with evocative photographs and reproductions of contemporary documents.

For balance, the debit side should perhaps have been stated more fully. Lemass may not have been directly responsible for the destruction in the Thirties of the cattle exporting sector, whose proprietors were largely his political opponents, but he went along with it. The whole country paid a heavy price, missing out on much-needed sterling from food-starved Britain during and after the Second World War.

There may have been something to be said for industrial protection to encourage new industries in the Thirties but not for the ban on inward investment contained in the Control of Manufactures Acts for which Lemass was directly responsible. It was the effective removal of this ban in 1958 that generated the export earnings that transformed Ireland after 1960. It was a tardy conversion; we had lost out heavily through the previous decade, for part of which Lemass was tanaiste.

The industrial growth of the Sixties also owed much to the tax relief on export profits introduced in 1956 by the much maligned Fine Gael finance minister Gerard Sweetman. There was an element of luck as terms of trade moved in our favour. Lemass may get a larger share of the credit than he deserves.

As taoiseach from 1959 to 1966, Lemass is credited with achieving a generational change in government. Yet the veteran bull-headed agriculture minister Pat Smith survived until 1964 and had to sack himself. Sean McEntee was allowed to go on until 1965 in the health portfolio where he achieved little. Foreign minister Frank Aiken, who outlasted Lemass, was so obsessed with the United Nations that he allowed his department to neglect Europe and Northern Ireland -- the latter with baneful consequences. Two of the new generation Lemass brought forward were Kevin Boland and Neil Blaney, who had little to offer except a Republican paternity. Lemass's failure to plan for a successor split his party for a generation.

The meeting with Captain O'Neill can be seen as a constructive move in North-South relations. But the real problem with Northern Ireland was the position of its Catholic minority. For Dublin to cosy up to the Northern government without being seen to address the situation of that minority must have increased their desperation. The author admits that Lemass was baffled by Northern Ireland.

It is often forgotten that Fianna Fail under Lemass lost ground in the percentage of the vote to Fine Gael under James Dillon. Lemass survived in office only because Labour refused to return to a Fine Gael-led coalition. One wonders if an awareness that he lacked popular appeal, especially in rural areas, made him too subservient to De Valera and held Lemass back for so long from pressing on with measures he knew would benefit the country.

There was something unfeeling about a man who did not bother to learn the names of those who worked for him in the civil service and one of whose children has said she did not know him. Lemass emerges as a man who put business and political objectives ahead of any consideration for individuals, even himself. In that sense the ruthless young terrorist, who would not speak of the exploits of his early life, was father to the formidable and purposeful political leader.

- Charles Lysaght

Sunday Independent