‘HEY Ronnie Reagan I’m black and I’m pagan/ I’m gay and I’m Left and I’m free/ I’m a non-fundamentalist environmentalist/ Don’t bother me.”
I wonder how many who will assemble to greet President Obama at his “major entertainment event” today in Dublin will have memories of those lines and may have turned out to greet a previous American President in less friendly style? President Obama will touch down in Ireland just short of the 27th anniversary of his predecessor, Ronald Reagan’s visit to our shores.
Unlike the near universal welcome extended to Obama, Reagan’s visit in 1984 provoked controversy, demonstrations, a hunger strike and an unprecedented walkout from his address to both Houses of the Oireachtas.
The president’s visit was meticulously planned by his image-maker-in-chief Michael Deaver. Deaver had worked for Reagan since his days as governor of California and his control and manipulation of the media, particularly television, has left a lasting mark on political communication.
Together with other White House staff Deaver devised a communication strategy that shielded the president from the press corps and used television to directly communicate the image of an active, heroic presidency.
Deaver’s skills at presidential image-making were well honed by the time he arrived in Ireland in the spring of 1984 to plot his president’s ancestral homecoming. Reagan’s Irish visit came at the end of a 10-day European trip that included the 40th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The agreed schedule saw Reagan arrive at Shannon and receive an honorary doctorate the following day at UCG. The next day the president visited his ancestral home in Ballyporeen in Tipperary and then went on to Dublin for a State dinner in Dublin Castle.
The final day culminated in an address to both Houses of the Oireachtas.
The Republican National Committee commissioned a camera crew to record the whole visit. Footage would later form part of a homage to Reagan launched at the Republican Convention in Dallas that August, which was produced by Philip Dusenberry, perhaps better known for a series of Pepsi ads featuring singer Michael Jackson.
Deaver’s attention to detail however didn’t take into account the substantial opposition in Ireland to Reagan’s visit. The White House was used to protests, at home and abroad, but as the scale of dissent in Ireland became clear in advance of the president’s arrival, it caused concern among the president’s aides, not least because it would contrast starkly with the adulation that greeted John F Kennedy a mere 20 years earlier.
Opposition to Reagan, particularly in Europe, was largely dominated by left-wing groups and centred on the issue of nuclear disarmament. For Deaver, these protests, often featuring long-haired left-wing radicals, some of whom would helpfully display a hammer and sickle banner, didn’t distract from the presidential image. However, Ireland was different.
Reagan’s White House viewed Central America as a vital front in the Cold War. Throughout the 1980s it supported right-wing paramilitaries in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Honduras.
The attitude among many in Ireland to this growing left-wing movement was considerably more nuanced. In addition to the traditional support from left-of-centre groups, Ireland’s long missionary tradition had resulted in Irish priest and nuns working with the poor throughout Latin America. For them, left-wing governments and movements were a reaction to the violence, exploitation and abuse of human rights perpetrated by the wealth elite which American policy sought to bolster. The brutal murder in March 1980 of Archbishop Romero by right-wing thugs in El Salvador increased international awareness of the turmoil in the region.
A range of groups in Ireland, involving both religious and left-wing activists, were deeply critical of US policy, and senior public figures such as Bishop Eamon Casey and Michael D Higgins had visited Nicaragua and El Salvador in the years prior to Reagan’s visit.
This unique coalition of the Irish Left and concerned religious formed the backbone of the anti-Reagan protest movement. What is remarkable is that many from each side had been on opposing camps during the bitter abortion referendum held just months before. Yet the depth of feeling about injustice in Central America was such that these differences were largely set aside.
The anti-Reagan protests were notable not just for their composition but also for their inventiveness. The moment the president’s plane landed at Shannon a group of nuns, Sisters for Justice, began a hunger strike outside the Garden of Remembrance which lasted until Reagan departed four days later. In Galway, where Reagan received an honorary doctorate of laws from UCG, a “de-conferring” ceremony was held in Eyre Square where previous recipients of honorary doctorates burnt their parchments to show their disgust at the NUI decision. Bishop Eamon Casey didn’t attend the UCG ceremony; instead he found a religious service as far away from the campus as possible.
While the protests were peaceful there was noticeable concern, and overreaction, among the Irish authorities. In advance of major marches in Dublin city, council workers were instructed to remove all posters advertising the events. A women’s peace camp erected outside the US ambassador’s residence in the Phoenix Park was forcibly removed by gardaí before Reagan reached Dublin and the 33 women involved were arrested and detained for 24 hours.
Reagan’s keynote speech to the Oireachtas on the final day of the tour surprised many. Instead of a sentimental evocation of his own roots and the strength of the Irish- American relationship, Reagan used the opportunity to deliver a keynote foreign policy address.
However, another incident in the Dáil chamber is equally noteworthy. Before Reagan began his address, the leader of the Workers’ Party, Tomás MacGiolla, got to his feet and explained why he and his fellow TD, Prionsias De Rossa, along with independent Tony Gregory, would leave the chamber. Despite being perfectly audible, so much so that he was booed and heckled by other parliamentarians present, MacGiolla’s words were never recorded in the official record. To this day the Dáil report of the June 4th 1984 refers only to “interruptions”.
Reagan departed the following day. The footage for his Irish visit was suitably edited and shown to his Republican followers in Dallas the following August. In November, Reagan went on to record a crushing victory over Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. For Deaver it was a triumph, but at times during those four days in June he must asked himself whether those pesky Irish had rained on his parade.