The relationship between Dr Noel Browne and Archbishop John Charles McQuaid is perhaps unique in 20th-century Irish public life. They were adversaries in one of the most controversial political crises since independence, the Mother and Child debacle of 1951. And so central was that episode to the careers of both that their political reputations are, to quite an extent, interdependent.
In 1951 McQuaid was the victor and Browne the loser. But McQuaid's victory was to prove Pyrrhic: and Browne - although loser, martyr and crank on the Mother and Child issue - has also proved to have been broadly correct in advocating greater State involvement in the health service. Of the two, Browne anticipated this historic shift and, in consequence, history has been kinder to him.
A more fashionable figure than McQuaid, Browne has been depicted as a secular, liberal champion of the plain people, vanquished by a bullying hierarchy, a greedy medical establishment and a cowardly group of cabinet colleagues. Nobody was keener to promote this characterisation than Browne himself. And he did so, assiduously, in speeches, letters to the newspapers, interviews with journalists, broadcasters and historians, and in his best-selling memoirs, Against The Tide.
That this book has proved the most successful of its kind in Irish publishing history has resulted in the Browne version of events becoming embedded in Irish popular memory. But a close analysis of his book shows Browne's reconstruction of events to be self-serving and highly partisan: indeed, it is especially open to revision from documents to be found in McQuaid's archive.
That this past week's controversy concerning McQuaid's sexuality should have sprung from Browne's extraordinary document, The Virgin Island, is fundamentally unsatisfactory. And this for two reasons: first, it is unfair to McQuaid that a suggestion so sensational as that he was a paedophile should be publicised as it was without John Cooney, as biographer, being free to discuss all his sources; and this because of a serialisation embargo negotiated with the Sunday Times.
Given how the media have already reported the controversy, McQuaid's reputation, irrespective of the eventual status of the accusations, may be irretrievably damaged by this initial battering.
But there is a more fundamental problem, and that concerns Browne's document itself. We have been informed that he was approached by a retired school inspector who told him that he had heard that McQuaid had sexually molested the young son of a publican in Drumcondra in the 1950s.
However, instead of making a contemporary note of the conversation - as, indeed, one would routinely expect from a politician or a psychiatrist - and with as much detail of the inspector, the pub and the accusation, Browne contents himself with writing a fictional short story based on the accusation!
He did not go public; he did not make inquiries; he has not left us the name of the inspector; and we are also invited to believe that Browne did not want this document to become public. We are told that Browne felt sorry for the archbishop: yet he leaves this smoking gun among his papers!
Both men's reputations, as I have already suggested, are interlinked because the reverberations of the Mother and Child crisis influenced church-State relations and so much else in Irish politics in the decades that followed. Their respective accounts of what happened in that fateful clash differ markedly. The truth about their relationship is far more complex than popular opinion suspects as an examination of McQuaid's archive and Browne's testimony will demonstrate.
I choose the terms "archive" and "testimony" with some deliberation. McQuaid's archive is awesome in its scale and candour and in the self-confidence of its originator. It will continue to provide insights into 20th-century Irish politics for years to come.
Browne, while apparently equally keen to influence the historian, has left behind much less satisfactory source material. He is an extraordinarily complicated witness for the historian. For a central player in these events, he has left us with a dearth of contemporary documents.
Not only are we told that his private papers were casually and haphazardly handled during his lifetime, but the researcher must approach the official departmental records during his tenure as minister with rather limited expectations.
The explanation is simple: in his memoirs he writes an account of how, just before he resigned and with the co-operation of his closest civil servants, he "took care that all documents in our files likely to be used or misused against us were destroyed".
He describes his ministerial office as "littered with rolled-up snowballs of paper. Wastepaper baskets were full." He justifies this extraordinary, and quite illegal, action with the aside: "I was later told that John Costello's first demand on taking over the department was that he be given all available documents, private or otherwise."
McQuaid's papers, in contrast, form one of the most complete archives among 20th-century figures in Irish public life.
Reading them one is most struck by their candour: his verdicts on people and events can be blunt and hurtful. In dealing with his adversaries, one is more likely to reckon him guilty of overweening arrogance than of duplicity or spin. He was a meticulous notetaker, had a prodigious memory and was a magpie when it came to filing away all documents.
The jury must still be out on whether there is any substantive evidence damaging to McQuaid in Browne's archive: but that Browne's preferred self-image is in need of some revision is manifest from the McQuaid papers. Here is McQuaid's account of a crucial and pivotal meeting with Browne on Holy Thursday in 1951. This is within days of the denouement of the Mother and Child debacle.
"Dr B. began by `abject apology' for troubling me on such a day. Described his notes and impressions concerning our interview in October. I told him exactly how he had behaved. He was very surprised and apologised, saying he had been very nervous." Later McQuaid notes that Browne "asked me to believe he wanted to be only a good Catholic and to accept fully Church's teaching."
There then followed yet another reiteration by McQuaid of his objections to Browne's version of the Mother and Child scheme.
McQuaid's note adds: "Dr B. then said: `Well, that is the end. It will be very serious for the government and the people and me. I shall leave the cabinet and political life. It is a rotten life'. (I interjected: `It need not be'. He answered: `But it is. I had thought I could make it different'). It is a life I was forbidden to take up, for I was given a few years to live, and I have a wife and two children'.
"I remarked: `You must not ask me for advice on your political life. That I could not give. I do not understand your politics.' Dr B. answered: `Of course, I would not think of asking such advice'."
McQuaid concludes with the comment that Browne thanked him effusively: "Again apologised for all in which he had been faulty."
This meeting is ignored in Browne's book. Nor must we rely solely on McQuaid's testimony. Here is another bishop, Dr James Staunton, secretary to the Hierarchy, commenting on his meeting with Browne on March 29th, 1951.
Browne, in his memoirs, describes as "uneventful" his meeting with Staunton. "Politely we exchanged pleasantries, and parted."
This is in marked contrast to Staunton's account, which is to be found in the McQuaid archives. Staunton's memorandum depicts a quite contrite Browne who felt that "through his own fault" in misunderstanding the views of the bishops, "he might have given the impression that he intended to oppose the Hierarchy or that he did not give sufficient attention to their views. He had intended none of these things and so far as he might seem to have intended them, he felt that he should apologise as well as explain."
There followed some detailed discussion of how various misunderstandings had arisen. What is important for our purposes is to show how at variance is Browne's spin in his memoirs and this contemporary account by the other party to the conversation.
When testimony is so contradictory, the historian must make a judgment. Or invite the reader to so do. Staunton concludes his report to McQuaid: "Dr Browne now wished to state that as far as he was to blame, he regretted very much the situation that had arisen; that he was fully prepared to accept the decision of the bishops as to whether the scheme, or part of it, were opposed to faith and morals; that if they decided the scheme was opposed to faith and morals he would, as a Catholic, not proceed with it, however painful it would be to him as a man to drop it; that he would resign his position as Minister of Health as he had not been able to implement his promises."
As suggested at the beginning of this article McQuaid's and Browne's reputations are interlocked. While one must await the publication of John Cooney's book before assessing all the evidence, this writer feels confident on one point: there is more to learn about Noel Browne from McQuaid's archive than there may be about McQuaid from Browne's records.
Dr John Bowman is a historian and broadcaster, and writer-presenter of the award-winning television documentary: John Charles McQuaid: What The Papers Say