“Michael Collins, Fine Gael and the Politics of Hope”
Address by Gerry O’Connell, Vice President of Fine Gael to the
Inaugural Collins 22 Society Conference, Hotel Kilkenny, October 16th 2004.
Honourable Mayor, Society President, Deputy, Senators, Councillors, Members
of the Collins 22 Society Committee, Fellow Friends.
| I stand here before you today in Historic Kilkenny, as Vice President of the Fine Gael party, as we gather to remember, exactly one hundred and fourteen years to his very birth-date, the spiritual founder of Fine Gael and the father of Irish Democracy, General Michael Collins. | ||||
| I am honoured to have been invited by the Collins 22 Society, to speak to you on the topic of “Michael Collins, Fine Gael and the Politics of Hope.” There are some that would argue, quite wrongly in my book, that Michael Collins and Fine Gael sit uncomfortably in the one sentence. That the connection between General Collins and the Fine Gael party of today is at best obtuse and at worst irrelevant. I will argue before you today, my friends, that the reverse is true. That Michael Collins has left behind him something more than the inspiration for a Hollywood script, that a rich font of political ideals, and boundless inspiration remains. That one hundred and fourteen years after his death, in a Ireland that has changed utterly since the Beal na mBlath ambush, the relevance of the Michael Collins story, a life lived as a profile of courage, remains of inestimable significance. That aside from an iconic picture on a wall, Michael Collins’s life, his writings, the political principles he followed and the civilian political tradition his life and death inspired, is our inheritance in Fine Gael. It’s our standard, it’s the torch that can never be quenched, it’s the dream that will never die, and it’s our historic mission to carry on the Politics of Hope, to rise above the morass and the blancmange of politics as usual. To renew hope in public life. A hope that was first planted in the minds of Modern Ireland by Michael Collins No generation can choose the age or circumstance in which it is born, but through leadership it can choose to make the age in which it is born an age of enlightenment. Michael Collins feverishly applied himself to the task of leadership from an early age. His birthplace in Woodfield was a veritable crucible of ideas, where a progressive tradition and a love of national identity was fostered at an early age His early influences included his elderly father Michael John Collins from whom he received a lifelong interest in learning. The blacksmith James Santry in whose gnarled hands the Fenian pikes of 1867 were crafted was an early republican influence. Denis Lyons his teacher at Lissavaird National School, the only place of formal education that Collins attended was a firebrand orator of the best traditions of Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. During his adolescence and young adulthood in London, Collins constantly applied himself to a course of self-improvement, even after the Easter Rising where the futility of the conflict was summed up by the trudging of Volunteers towards the prison boats at the North Wall, bound for Frongoch Internment Camp, Collins is described in his cousin Nancy O’Brien’s memoirs of whistling the Banks of My Own Lovely Lee like a “wide-eyed minstrel boy, having recruited a dozen of his fellow inmates to what he then described as “The Movement”, whilst sauntering to the port. Running the rule over Michael Collins life can be neatly summated into four questions Firstly, was he truly a man of courage, with the courage to stand up to one’s enemies and the courage when necessary, to one’s associates, the courage to resist public pressure and private greed Secondly was he truly a man of judgement with perceptive judgement of the future as well as the past a judgement of his mistakes as well as the mistakes of others with enough wisdom to know what he did not know and enough candour to admit it. Thirdly was he truly a man of integrity, a man who never ran out on either the principles he believed or the people who believed in them a man who believed in you, a man whom neither financial gain nor political ambition could ever divert from the fulfilment of the trust of his cause. Finally was he not a truly a man of dedication with a honour mortgaged to no man. And comprised by no obligation , but devoted solely to serving the national interest. Courage, Judgement, Integrity and Dedication these as the historic qualities that I believe Fine Gael has held since the foundation of our State, but it was Michael Collins who held them first of all. This is the bar he set for his shattered colleagues while gunfire whistled through the rafters of the Mansion House in the early hours of August 23rd 1922, and a new Provisional Government was pieced together in the hours after Beal na Blath. The names around that table are names familiar to all of you here. Mulcahy, O’Higgins, and Cosgrave. These were the figures who stepped into the shoes of Griffith and Collins and nurtured our fledgling state. These are the founding fathers of Fine Gael their public lives are the departure point from where the Fine Gael story commences. It’s a rich heritage, a proud legacy, to be able to point the generation that laid the foundations for everything we now as free citizens of a free democracy, take for granted. That’s reason not just for inspiration that’s a tremendous source of pride. Let it not be forgotten that whilst this country was sundered by a civil war, this Cumann na Gaedhael generation held the line for democracy Let it not be forgotten that every ounce, every scintilla of sovereignty, every measure of self-determination was achieved on the basis of the Michael Collins analysis of the Treaty as being the freedom to achieve freedom The people who built the nation’s infrastructure and defended that infrastructure with every ounce of marrow in their bones in the 1920’s. Who marched for the freedom of association and the right of assembly and free speech in the 1930’s. Who brought together the strands of the political spectrum and declared for us a Republic in the 1940’s. Who dared to dream of a better way and shouted stop as the children of the nation were being exported like cattle in the hungry fifties, who restored hope in the heart of politics and embraced the just society in the 1960’s, who first set this Island on the path, the long and winding path towards reconciliation in the 1970’s, who saved this country from the twin terrors of auction politics and voodoo public standards in the 1980’s, who set the ball rolling for a economic miracle which is the shining star in the European Union’s crown in the 1990’s, who today has ripped up it’s mourning, torn down the walls of division and rancour and got back up off its knees, to fight once more for the politics of hope. For Today, Friends, Our country needs the politics of hope, practised by Fine Gael and inspired by Michael Collins. To begin that task we must ensure that Collins’s legacy forms the centrality of our current message. He dared us to be brave, so brave we must be. He’d view our lot in life today, through the eyes of an idealist, the glass was always half-full with Collins never half-empty. In his words he summed this can-do philosophy up by saying “Let us not waste our energies brooding over the more we might have got. Let us look upon what it is we have got” He would caution us here in Kilkenny today, counsel his political successors by perhaps paraphrasing another great Irish political leader: the late Robert Kennedy; warning us about “the wide and tragic gaps between promise and performance”. He would urge all here charged with the leadership of the party he inadvertently founded, to dreams of things that never were and ask why not, to constantly strive for the greatest good for the greatest number, he would ask to keep hope alive. Keep hope alive Keep hope alive I know that he would counsel the new Fine Gael front bench, that the only time we win, is when we come together. If he lived to hear the oratory of one of his political descendants James Dillon, one remark, a remark oft quoted by Enda Kenny, would surely resonate with him. “Political success is predicated on one thing, and one thing only, strict adherence to the principle of United we Stand, Divided we Fall”. A lesson Fine Gael needs to never forget in the challenges that lay ahead. An entry in the final series of field-diaries written by Collins, contained the simple heading on one page, a simple but telling phrase “Finding Common Ground”. Collins had the bent of the egalitarian in most things he turned his hand to. His initial constituency was the constituency of the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, and the disrespected. Michael Collins would find common ground with the farm families of today and would be bewildered by the constant march towards economic ruin the leaders of this government has set Muintir na Talun on. Michael Collins would find common ground with the first time housebuyer, the young married couple that have the ground swept from under them under a barrage of stealth taxes and rip-off practices, Michael Collins would find common ground with the people who use our public health service, he would be incensed at the thought that a economic consultant’s report hangs over our local hospitals like a hangman’s noose. He would I imagine if he entered Government Buildings today, having been tripped up on his way into the Taoiseach’s office with a bale of expert reports, he would assume the position of Our Lord in the Marketplace and scatter those charlatans and three-card trick men to the four corners of this island. He would say to Enda Kenny that leadership must always face the moral challenge of our times, Enda Kenny is the man that has re-introduced the civilian tradition of Michael Collins in the lexicography of political rhetoric in Fine Gael. Enda Kenny will keep hope alive Michael Collins was many things to many people, but above all he was a young man, 32 years old, there is something incredible about the correlation I think that at 32, Thomas Jefferson was declaring that “All Men Are created equal”, at 32, Michael Collins was putting that maxim into practice. Today he would tell us that we must make room for young Ireland. He would urge us all to impress upon the youth of Ireland, of the power of one, the power of one vote. He would ask to heed the counsels of the young and the young at heart. When the present has a quarrel with the past, the future is in danger, and we in Ireland cannot afford that to happen. He would tell this audience that no one needs to point to the exit signs in this hall, to tell the prejudiced, the extremist and the intolerant that they are not welcome here, nor in the party that has picked up his fallen torch. For we in Fine Gael we challenge the young, not demonise them, we must counsel the young not criminalise them, we must heed the voices and opinions of the young and not shout down those voices. Michael Collins would view any mandate held by any government to be flawed when the young are disenfranchised by alienation and prejudice. And I know it will surely gladden his heart to know that more and more young people choose Fine Gael over any other political party in this state today. So, fellow patriots and followers of Collins let the call go forth from Kilkenny that today has been a Day of Affirmation, a day that Fine Gael affirmed its commitment to following the legacy of Collins to keep hope alive. These my dear friends are not simplistic pledges, but they are at the heart of our tradition, of your tradition, and of my tradition. We dare not forsake that tradition, we cannot let the great purposes of Michael Collins and the Fine Gael party become bygone passages of history. I look forward to the day that a Fine Gael government affords the 22nd of August the distinction that day deserves and declares it to be a National Holiday I look forward to the day that we raise his statue, and give him his rightful place as Father of the Nation, outside Leinster House. I look forward to the presence of Enda Kenny as the Taoiseach of this country and the return of the politics of hope. A great mission, one we can all achieve if we stick together, and never let the bonds of party kinship be frayed, a collection of equals, 30,000 shareholders in a dream, with equal rights and shared responsibilities, from the winning of elections to the election of future party leaders with a vote of the party membership. The commitment we seek is not to outworn views, but to old values that will never wear out. Courage, Judgment, Integrity and Dedication The Politics of Hope is the Politics of Fine Gael, and it falls to the followers of Collins to keep hope alive once more. In his final aspirational piece written not long before the Beal na mBlath ambush took his life Collins signed off with comment: “Let the Nation show its true character, use its courage, tenacity, clear and swift intellect: its pride in the service of the nation ideal as our reason directs us” Let us follow that path and keep hope alive. ENDS |