When I arrived into the minister's office in Marlborough Street (December 1982) they were still getting over "the night of the 30 per cent". This was the famous occasion when Charles Haughey, suddenly one night in 1980, instructed his Minister for Education, John Wilson, to give a pay rise to teachers which up to that point had been refused by government. The award was even higher than that offered by an arbitration board, an offer which itself had been rejected as too costly by the government.
"The teachers," says Stephen Collins in his recent book, The Power Game, "were as stunned as everybody else by their good fortune and the arbitration board resigned in protest at being made a mockery of by the government."
Fast forward to 1985: an embattled Fine Gael/Labour government with a shaky majority in the Dail, public finances in chaos, and yet another pay demand from the teachers and arbitration award on the table. The package would have added about £110 million to the public service pay bill. The arbitrator had proposed a special 10 per cent increase for teachers, with retrospection, on top of the public service pay increases already underway, which on their own would give teachers 17 per cent over two years. We were looking, therefore, at close to a 28 per cent pay increase for all teachers.
The government proposed to phase in the special award over a two-year period instead of paying it retrospectively. It was that proposal which sparked off the huge protests, strike actions and political manoeuvrings which convulsed the country from the autumn of 1985 to the spring of 1986.
Picketing, one-day strikes and confrontations ensued, TDs were besieged at their clinics and there were mass meetings in schools where politicians, including ministers, were like Christians facing the lions.
In the new Ireland, by contrast, for the first years of the present Government - from 1997 until now - Minister Micheal Martin, in the Department of Education, enjoyed a kind of rosy approval from all sides as he dispensed the State's increasing largesse across the education system. He was indeed the envy of certain former ministers, including Mary O'Rourke who, on becoming minister in 1987, had to do a volte face on all the promises she had made on spending in the previous four years. This year, Micheal Martin's luck held - and Minister Michael Woods took over just as the ASTI got tough.
There are other important differences - and some similarities between then and now. In the year 2000, the three teaching unions are singing from different hymn sheets, but in 1985 and 1986 mass rallies and banners, a gathering of 35,000 teachers in Croke Park and a solid united front was designed to strike fear into any minister's heart. A minister (me) was moved to use the forbidden word "morality" about the huge demands at a time of economic crisis and the targeting of children in certain ministers' constituencies. And, co-incidentally, the waters were muddied, then as now, by the emergence of a proposed large pay increase for politicians.
The people are different: Joe O'Toole succeeded Gerry Quigley as head of the INTO, became a senator and is now heading into leadership of ICTU - and wants peace. That other skilful teachers' leader, the ASTI's Kieran Mulvey, who was the bete noir of successive governments, is now head of the Labour Relations Commission.
Today, the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness has followed a succession of such general agreements between the social partners - and the ASTI find themselves isolated outside it. No such agreements existed in that difficult scenario of the 1980s.
In the Dail, the ail Opposition, while criticising the present Government on aspects of their handling of the ASTI dispute, is not advocating that the ASTI should be given its demands. Today, the Opposition believes that the partnership deals are important to economic stability and does not want them to collapse.
But in the days of Haughey-led Fianna Fail, on February 6th, 1986, after a fiery debate in Dail Eireann, all his deputies - including Bertie Ahern, Ray McSharry, Albert Reynolds, Mary O'Rourke and Charlie McCreevy - voted to give the teachers everything they wanted. This had been the pattern ever since the arbitrator's award had been announced. However, the government won the vote. The majority was a comfortable 12, because the Progressive Democrats - in one of their first political tests - went through the `Yes' lobbies with them.
Yes, indeed those were stirring times - and great days for teacher-power (conversely, bad days for good government). Only a week after that vote, when the government had been seen to stand firm, the Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald launched a re-shuffle which, among other things, put Patrick Cooney into Marlborough Street. A complex fudging deal was then done with the teachers which ended the disputes.
In his autobiography All in a Life, Garret FitzGerald says he was persuaded "against his better judgment" that the cost of the settlement could be met by saving on the salaries of teachers who had taken strike action, and the dropping of a claim for graduates' allowances. "I subsequently came to doubt the validity of this calculation," he said.
Some more militant teachers were apparently congratulating themselves on having got rid of a troublesome minister. I doubt if Minister Woods need have any fear.
I have often wondered what the outcome would have been if the coalition government of 1982-87, instead of struggling on, had gone to the country on the back of that Dail victory of February 6th. A sticky wicket to fight an election on - but surely not worse than the very difficult campaign a year later. I cannot see this current Government going to the country on the ASTI issue, however. But a week is a long time in politics, and if the dispute escalates despite a revitalised PPF and a generous Budget, Bertie and Mary might have another look at their options.
In any dispute, the fight for public opinion is all-important. Ministers today have much better press and information resources - and it must be worrying for the ASTI that the teachers are not winning the public relations battle. They also have to cope with a parents' backlash, which while limited and not as cohesive as it might be, nevertheless is beginning to flex its muscles. (When I set up the National Parents' Council, I had hoped that the second-level tier would develop a more united front.)
The ASTI is demanding the start of discussions by this weekend. and promises another all-out one-day strike on December 14th. Threats to the public examinations are in the air. Meanwhile, the Government prepares a Budget which will, among other things, give a boost to take-home pay for all workers, including teachers. The PPF will have been strengthened by agreement between all the partners and will further enhance earnings, and increase the ASTI's isolation.
There is a mechanism (benchmarking) which holds out a prospect of flexibility for both sides. So - unlike in 1986 - there is room for settlement, and of course a solution will be found. Our concern has to be, however, that whatever is agreed, it will not be accompanied by changes in work practices, which are overdue for reform. Will the consumers - our school students - be the winners? I doubt it.
