PoliticsPeople have to kiss many toads before they get to meet the prince, David Andrews observes in passing apropos Charles Haughey's deal with Des O'Malley's Progressive Democrats to form Fianna Fáil's first coalition government in 1989. The same observation might be applied to his own political career, which involved a long period in the wilderness before getting to the cabinet table as a full minister.
A son of Todd Andrews, one of the original hard men of Fianna Fáil (though never a holder of an elected office), his republican and Fianna Fáil credentials were unassailable when he stood in Dún Laoghaire in the 1965 general election and easily won one of the party's two seats. A 30-year-old barrister, recently married, his political future seemed bright.
But there was one toad he was never prepared to kiss politically and that turned out to be the dominant member of Fianna Fáil for more than two decades. His antipathy towards Charles Haughey, and Haughey's towards him, was there from the start. There was the issue of Haughey's "integrity", Andrews notes, but it wasn't just that. It was also, he suggests, a matter of "southside urban man" (tall and good looking: himself) and "northside urban man" (small and not conventionally attractive: Haughey). Hatred came later, he says bluntly.
Haughey's dislike of Dún Laoghaire was obvious in his usual dismissive references to it as Kingstown and his infrequent visits. On one of them, he turned up to a Fianna Fáil cumann dinner in black tie although it was not formal, and said he assumed that everybody always dressed for dinner in Kingstown.
Andrews's first taste of the higher echelons of politics when he became chief whip in the aftermath of the Arms Crisis did not help their relationship either. Trying to whip the likes of Neil Blaney and Haughey into the government lobby at that time speeded up his political education. It was inevitable that he would be overlooked repeatedly when Haughey became party leader and could always be relied upon to join any heave to replace him.
ANDREWS SAYS THAT his opposition to Haughey did not affect his relations with his father, who saw Haughey as a true republican, and his younger brother Niall, TD for Dublin South and a fervent Charlie man. Reading between the lines, though, one senses that he was closer to his mother Mary and inherited many of his more liberal and tolerant views from her. While in the political wilderness, he did not waste his time in conspiracies but carved out a niche for himself in the then very sparsely populated liberal wing of Fianna Fáil and as a strong supporter of human rights and Third World development.
He was one of the first mainstream politicians to campaign for the Birmingham Six and other Irish victims of injustice in Britain. He was a regular visitor to Africa and the Middle East, often in the company of Labour's Michael D Higgins, whom he describes as a great humanitarian. Throughout the 1980s, he was one of the few in Fianna Fáil who supported what was known as the "liberal agenda", though he never took his opposition to the party leadership's often opportunistic positions to the point that Des O'Malley and Mary Harney did.
WHEN THE LATTER formed the PDs it was widely expected that Andrews would join them and he admits that he led O'Malley to believe he would. He went off to Paris for a rugby international weekend to consider his future; he never got to the match but walked the city for hours and eventually decided to stay put because of his parents, his friends and co-workers. He couldn't walk away from Fianna Fáil.
He finally got to meet the prince when his belief that the party would outlast Haughey came true in 1993 and Albert Reynolds appointed him to the cabinet post he most desired, foreign affairs. It was the first of two short stints in the department, the second from 1997 to 2000 under Bertie Ahern, which involved him in the beginning and end of the Good Friday Agreement. The portfolio also allowed him pursue his third world interests, notably in putting the appalling situation in Somalia in the early 1990s on the international radar and the winning of independence for East Timor, another of his favourite causes. One of his last official appointments was lunch with Queen Elizabeth ("a decent woman") at Buckingham Palace. One can imagine what Charlie Haughey had to say about that.
Kingstown Republican is not in the same class as his father's memoir of the decades before and after Independence, Dublin Made Me, but few Irish political memoirs are: Todd Andrews deserves to be remembered for that as much as for the closure of the Harcourt Street railway line (which his son points out more than once was a government decision his father had to implement). Kingstown Republican is a highly readable account of David Andrews's political life and times, spiced with numerous anecdotes, insights, vignettes and illuminating pen pictures of friends, opponents and some enemies. He is not as blunt about all his political contemporaries as he is about Haughey but he doesn't hide his opinions of them either.
To borrow one of his own favourite terms of approbation, it's the well-told story of a decent man.
Joe Joyce is the co-author with Peter Murtagh of The Boss: Charles Haughey in Government
Kingstown Republican: A Memoir By David Andrews New Island, 328pp. €24.95