JournalismDick Walsh was an influential political journalist, who showed courage in persevering with his craft despite a crippling disability. I recall courteous exchanges in the press room at Fianna Fáil Ard Fheiseanna, but also now and again crossing swords on the letters page. Most people in Fianna Fáil preferred to pass him by.
He had a clear world-view. The old Ireland, which he saw as an obstacle to progress, was an unholy alliance of Fianna Fáil, the Catholic Church and the GAA, but the greatest of these was post-Lynch Fianna Fáil. His main themes were fairly constant. He disliked exclusive nationalism. One detects no great enthusiasm for the Peace Process, with a negative reaction to the meeting of Hume, Adams and Reynolds after the first IRA ceasefire.
Walsh was a firm adherent of class politics. He depicted Fianna Fáil as right-wing and corrupt, under the thumb of wealthy interests, and unwilling to fund social services.
He was for the uncompromising liberalisation of social legislation, and likened the election of Mary Robinson to the presidency to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Without detracting from the importance of her new-style presidency, this was clearly hyperbole.
The dominant character of The Irish Times under the editorship of Conor Brady, with Walsh as an important editorial influence, was the journalistic equivalent of a rainbow coalition, leaving anyone sympathetic to Fianna Fáil a minority voice. Walsh listed those he admired in public life (Michael D. Higgins, Pat Rabbitte and Des Geraghty) and from the churches (Willie Walsh and Walton Empey, Seán Healy, Stanislaus Kennedy and Peter McVerry). He saw Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on "a slow bicycle race to reform, anxious not to disturb their most backward supporters", and castigated the former especially for "political opportunism, cowardice and ineptitude".
Some of the causes he backed have been substantially accomplished, not always as he might have approved. Outside of abortion, the liberal agenda has been largely completed. He gave credit to Máire Geoghegan-Quinn for steering through homosexual law reform. Accountability, about which he constantly railed, has improved with ethics and freedom of information legislation, though he would have excoriated recent changes to it. He had a point, when he wrote about people accused of not knowing what they are talking about, "that it is hard to find well-informed critics when everything that can be done is done to keep the critics from informing themselves". He referred scathingly to the Supreme Court ruling on cabinet confidentiality as something "the late Walter Ulbricht might have envied and which Franz Kafka might have exquisitely described". Since then, politicians have been jailed (not just Joe Higgins) or have paid heavy penalties. Unlike in some European democracies, no-one is above the law.
At times, he might surprise. On the first Gulf War in 1991, he wrote "I would take my chances any day with George Bush in preference to Saddam Hussein", thinking of the Observer journalist, Farzad Bazoft, "dangling on a rope". (I am not suggesting any read-across to George W. Bush or the recent Iraq war.) He was dismissive of the Labour proposal for a rotating taoiseach.
The volume is a selection, and it is difficult to follow the evolution of his opinions in relation to unfolding events, during the Peace Process, for example, or the weeks of the formation of the Fianna Fáil/Labour government, to which he strongly objected.
While he did acknowledge progress, it is hard to figure out how in his view it came about, given his damning verdict on so many of the principal forces in Irish society. Little credit was given for the transformation of the Irish economy and society over the past 16 years, leading to almost full employment, a decisive reversal of net emigration and a general rise in living standards.
Social partnership features little in these pages. While acknowledging the force of his critique of our more glaring deficiencies, Walsh did not have the ideological compass capable of adequately explaining the immense progress of the 1990s and the opportunities thereby created, or of acknowledging the contribution of the political leaders, parties and social forces that helped to bring it about. The best service that his successors and admirers can perform is to enlarge the focus as part of a rebalancing exercise so as to achieve a more balanced critique.
Meanwhile, the book is a fitting tribute to the man, and will be a useful reference work in the lengthening shelf of books about The Irish Times.
Senator Martin Mansergh is the author of The Legacy of History for Making Peace in Ireland, just published by Mercier Press
Dick Walsh Remembered: Selected Columns from The Irish Times 1990-2002 Foreword by John McGahern; afterword by Geraldine Kennedy
TownHouse, 252pp. €11.99