Drink and politics have been convivial bedfellows for many a year. More than a few politicians of my acquaintance would heartily concur with John Dryden's character in the Good Parson, who "made almost a sin of abstinence".
When I was a political correspondent at Westminster, one of the most atrocious drunks was George Brown, the mercurial foreign secretary in Harold Wilson's Labour government.
His cabinet colleague, Denis Healey, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, recalled that Brown came to depend so much on drink "that in the end I tried to avoid seeing him after midday". Another Minister, Ray Gunter, said Brown began drinking whisky at nine in the morning. Wilson, who enjoyed a tipple himself, was more charitable. "It was not that he drank more than the rest of us but that he could not hold it," he said.
Brown, short and portly, was the terror of the diplomatic scene, home and abroad. He would invariably arrive late and drunk at functions and behave outrageously. At a state gala in his honour in Rio de Janeiro he turned up late as usual and immediately approached a figure clad in a red gown to request a dance. "I will not dance with you for three reasons," the object of his desire replied. "Firstly, you're drunk. Secondly, the orchestra is playing the national anthem. Thirdly, I'm the Archbishop of Sao Paulo." While probably apocryphal, the story typifies Brown's behaviour during his brilliant but erratic term in government.
No such vibrant comet flashed across the Leinster House skies during my years as a political hack in Dublin. One of my tasks (for this newspaper) was to cover the presentation of credentials by new ambassadors to President de Valera at Áras an Uachtaráin. Once the formalities were over, the abstemious Dev would turn to his long-serving aide-de-camp, Col Sean Brennan, with the instruction: "Sean, make sure our friends are looked after." We, the reporters and photographers, would be then ushered into a side room and offered a drink. The choice was limited: sherry or whiskey. When the colonel's eyes were averted we would mark the level of the unused drink on each bottle; it would stay at the same mark until our next visit.
Dev took a poor view of excessive drinking by politicians and he himself set an austere standard of rectitude. I saw him slightly tipsy only once. It was during a state visit to Canada in 1964 when he crossed the river from the governor-general's residence in Ottawa to visit a school in Quebec run by the Christian Brothers. The brothers made their own wine and the President courteously accepted a glass or two. It was strong stuff, with a alcoholic content of about 15 per cent. Dev swayed a bit on the lawn but it was not possible to determine the exact state of his sobriety as, being blind, he had in any case to give his arm to Col Brennan when he walked.
One of his successors as Taoiseach, Jack Lynch, was no stranger to the bottle of whiskey. He prized the Cork distillation, Paddy, above all other beverages and used to complain privately that when he went to lunch or dinner abroad his host would always produce bottles of the great Bordeaux red wine, Chateau Lynch-Bages, in his honour. I covered most of the trips he and his minister for finance, Charles Haughey, made to canvass support for Ireland's application to join the EEC. Once, after a hard hot day of functions in a Southern European capital, we retired to the Irish Embassy. The ambassador, guarding his expenses as he must have done his communion money, made no effort to proffer immediate refreshments, much to Jack's annoyance.
After some small talk Jack, nodding towards our small press party, said: "Ambassador, the lads have had a long day. I'm sure they'd like a drink." When the ambassador went out to organise the drinks Jack muttered in hope: "I'm sure he must have a bottle of Paddy somewhere."
Lynch was fond of telling the story about a lunch given by the UN secretary-general, Kurt Waldheim, in New York. His fellow guests were Helmut Schmidt, the West German chancellor, and Pierre Trudeau, the Canadian prime minister. Waldheim chose Count Georges Kremser Schmidt 1976 as the white wine and the inevitable Chateau Lynch-Bages 1973 as the red. Schmidt turned to Lynch and commented: "Our host has complimented us but he has neglected poor Pierre." "No. he hasn't," said Trudeau, reaching for a glass of water. "There's my recognition - True d'eau."
Of course not all politicians drink. But abstinence can have its own dangers. In his autobiography, Memories (1992), Paddy Lindsay, the Mayo barrister who was the Fine Gael minister for the Gaeltacht in John A. Costello's inter-party government, recalls going to Áras an Uachtaráin to return his seal of office to President Sean T. 0'Kelly after the party lost the 1957 general election. He travelled in the same car as the Taoiseach and James Dillon, the minister for agriculture.
As they passed the Irish House, a famous pub on the Dublin quays, Dillon commented on the figurines which adorned its façade and then added: "You know, I was never in a public house in my life except in my own in Ballaghaderreen, which I sold because I saw people going home having spent so much money on drink. I decided that they were depriving their families of the essentials."
"Then, to my consternation," writes Lindsay, "Jack Costello said he was in a public house only once in his life, in Terenure, and was nearly choked by a bottle of orange. Jesus, I said, I now know why we are going in this direction today and why we are so out of touch with the people."