Explosive revelations

Spring, Summer and Fall is the working title of political memoirs due from Blackwater Press in September and its publisher John…

Spring, Summer and Fall is the working title of political memoirs due from Blackwater Press in September and its publisher John O'Connor says it contains "explosive and exclusive" material on events during the exciting 10 years ending in 1997.

And indeed it might - for the author is none other than Ray Kavanagh, general secretary of the Labour Party from 1986 to 1999. He knew much of what was going on behind the scenes, not just in Labour itself with its internal power struggles, but during the Rainbow government and the later Albert Reynolds/Dick Spring coalition and, ultimately, the falling out.

O'Connor says the book contains "mind-boggling information on the Bernie Malone versus Orla Guerin debacle, on Dick Spring and on Michael Smurfit. It's full of stories, incidents, controversy and anecdotes".

O'Connor has an eye for this sort of political drama. One of Blackwater's greatest successes was Sean Duignan's One Spin on the Merry Go Round but O'Connor has also published biographies of Mary Robinson, Sean Lemass and Brian Lenihan as well as Tim Ryan's Mara.

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Quidnunc hasn't seen Spring, Summer and Fall, although Blackwater's lawyers have, but she knows Kavanagh is what is called Old Labour, that he left his employment around the time of the merger with Democratic Left, which Old Labour opposed, and that New Labour, which now controls the party, could have reason to worry.