Analysis: Fianna Fáil-Fine Gael merger would be political revolution

Irish politics has been dominated since the foundation of the State by two purportedly opposite forces, but a decade of fragmentation has forced a series of increasingly comfortable hang-together collaborations.

While Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been — to quote former Bertie Ahern advisor Gerard Howlin — “in coalition or cahoots” since the 2016 confidence-and-supply arrangement, most of the opposition benches appear united, too, as never before.

Last month, a co-ordinated effort by most of the opposition parties, sparked by a ferocious Dáil row about speaking time, delayed the election of Taoiseach Micheál Martin by 24 hours.

With the opposition mostly united and the Government parties working in concert more than ever before, Irish politics is being redrawn.

The hewing closer of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the two parties that shaped the State’s first century, raises the question of whether Ireland’s once most bitter and implacable political enemies might be heading for a permanent merger.

When the question would arise as to the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, the late Jackie Healy-Rae used to say: “Them that knows don’t need to ask, and them that asks will never know.”

The real answer is not really all that complicated.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael both trace their origins to the first Sinn Féin, which was founded in 1905 by Arthur Griffith, and specifically to the independence movement of 1917 to 1921, which was led by Griffith, Éamon de Valera, and Micheal Collins.

The cliché of ‘Civil War politics’ owes its existence to the schism sparked by the signing, on December 6, 1921, of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

That event exposed old fault lines and created new enmities, leading to the emergence of the two parties that would tower over Irish politics for a century.

After the July, 1921, ceasefire, Griffith and Collins were among the five plenipotentiaries sent by the Dáil, at the request of de Valera, to negotiate peace terms in London.

The resulting treaty established the Irish Free State, but it hinged on an oath of allegiance to the British crown, something de Valera and other republican leaders found most difficult to swallow.

Collins saw the treaty as a stepping stone, offering “the freedom to achieve freedom”, and he was able to persuade a majority of TDs to ratify it.

While a formal split — as Brendan Behan observed, traditionally the first item on the agenda — was avoided at the Sinn Féin árd fheis of February, 1922, the uneasy peace between pro- and anti-treaty factions would not hold long.

Ahead of the June general election, Collins and de Valera agreed a seven-point pact, whereby a joint panel of candidates was agreed.

Despite the candidates’ fundamental political differences, transfers proved strong and resulted in the election of 58 pro-treaty Sinn Féin TDs and 36 anti-treaty TDs.

However, the Civil War erupted less than a week later, with Collins commander-in-chief of the national army.

By August 12, Arthur Griffith would be dead of a brain haemorrhage and heart failure at the age of 51.

Ten days later, Collins, militarily inexperienced and the worse for wear from drink, would be shot dead in an ambush at Béal na Bláth. He was 31.

By December, a new pro-treaty party, Cumann na nGaedheal (CnaG), had formed to support WT Cosgrave’s government. It would govern the new state until 1932.

When the Civil War ground to its inevitable end, on May 24, 1923, de Valera set about reconstituting Sinn Féin as an anti-treaty party with a clear abstentionist policy.

In the general election in August of that year, CnaG won 65 seats and Sinn Féin won 44.

As the young state grappled with grinding crises around poverty, housing, and unemployment, de Valera grew deeply frustrated with abstentionism, and in March of 1926 he announced a split from Sinn Féin.

Two months later, he founded Fianna Fáil, a party focused on what was at the time a radical agenda of social and economic reform. In the June general election, Fianna Fáil won 44 seats, against CnaG’s 47 seats and Labour’s 22.

What was left of Sinn Féin fielded 15 candidates and won only six seats.

Although he would later be mocked by pro-treaty politicians as “the oath-swallower”, in August, 1927, de Valera led Fianna Fáil to the Dáil, taking the oath of allegiance, and their seats on the opposition benches.

Some had guns in their pockets, and future leader Seán Lemass described Fianna Fáil as a “slightly constitutional” party.

A snap election the following month saw Fianna Fáil gain 13 seats, 57 to CnaG’s 62 and Labour’s 13.

Mary MacSwiney, sister of former Cork lord mayor Terence, and de facto Sinn Féin leader, announced before the election that the party did not have the funds to field candidates.

In the February, 1932, general election Fianna Fáil made its true breakthrough, winning 72 seats to CnaG’s 57.

Labour’s vote collapsed, dropping to seven.

New Cork TD Seán Moylan insisted that Fianna Fáil’s election success was a triumph for “the owners of the donkey and cart over the pony-and-trap class”.

Although Fianna Fáil were five seats short of an overall majority, a deal was reached to secure Labour support for a minority government and a peaceful transfer of power ensued.

Again, some Fianna Fáil TDs were armed when entering the Dáil, and it would later emerge that Garda Commissioner Eoin O’Duffy had unsuccessfully urged Cosgrave to front a military coup.

A year later, de Valera would learn of this conspiracy and fire O’Duffy.

In the snap election of January, 1933, CnaG dropped to 48 seats, and the National Centre Party, which represented farming interests, picked up 11 seats.

A merger was proposed between CnaG and the Centre Party, and a third grouping, the National Guard, better known as the Blue-shirts, a paramilitary force that had gained a new leader in July, 1933, when Eoin O’Duffy joined.

The group got its nickname because of its adoption of a distinctive blue shirt.

O’Duffy, a great admirer of Benito Mussolini, restricted the membership to Irish Christians.

In August, 1933, the Fianna Fáil government banned the Blueshirts, fearing that a planned parade in Dublin might emulate the effects of the March on Rome that had brought Mussolini to power.

The following month, CnaG completed its merger with the Centre Party and the Blue-shirts.

As the three groups completed their amalgamation, the then editor of The Irish Times, Bertie Smyllie, memorably said that CnaG had been a party “one wished would be open to ideas, until one saw the kind of ideas they were open to”.

Although the newly-merged party, Fine Gael, was dominated by CnaG members, O’Duffy was made leader.

In the local elections of June, 1934, Fine Gael won only six out of 23 councils.

O’Duffy’s leadership began to unravel, his unpredictable and extremist rhetoric exacerbated by a burgeoning drink problem. When his colleagues attempted to control his public utterances, O’Duffy resigned.

By year’s end, he was attending the Montreux fascist conference, and he later raised an Irish brigade of about 700 to fight beside Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War.

Cosgrave assumed leadership of Fine Gael, with James Dillon, formerly of the Centre Party, as deputy leader.

The modern Fine Gael seems to affect amnesia about its first leader, preferring to imagine its spiritual founder, Michael Collins, who died 11 years before the party’s formation, and four months before CnaG’s.

As a rule, Fine Gael tends to studiously avoid mention of the Blueshirts, although its political rivals have always been more than happy to offer reminders at every opportunity, and to this day the term ‘Blueshirt’ remains an insult often deployed to impressive effect by the party’s opponents.

But to go back to the Jackie Healy-Rae question: What is the difference between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael?

An enmity born of conflict has shaped, some might say warped, Irish politics for a century.

Although most observers would agree that Fianna Fáil was always considered slightly to the left of Fine Gael, Ireland has never had, until perhaps now, the sort of traditional left-right divide seen in other countries.

From the beginning, Seán Moylan’s line about Fianna Fáil representing “the owners of the donkey and cart over the pony-and-trap class” applied, with Fine Gael always being more the party of the stout shopkeeper and the big farmer.

Charles Haughey never forgave Garret FitzGerald’s 1979 claim that the new Fianna Fáil leader had a “flawed pedigree”. Despite FitzGerald’s subsequent, somewhat unconvincing, claims that he had merely meant that Haughey did not enjoy universal support within his party, many in Fianna Fáil still see it as a comment emblematic of Fine Gael’s officer-class arrogance.

The cartoon version was always that Fianna Fáil was the party of the stroke and the Galway tent.

However, the findings of the Moriarty tribunal complicated that picture somewhat.

Nowadays, Fine Gael sees itself as socially liberal and fiscally responsible, that last claim founded not least on all the times the party had to step in and clean up messes not of its making, whereas Fianna Fáil, from its earliest days, has considered itself left-of-centre, even if, for most of its lifetime, it has been socially conservative.

When Haughey and FitzGerald were knocking lumps out of each other, their parties commanded between them 80% of the vote. Now, together, they barely scrape half of that.

The Civil War parties, for almost a decade, in coalition or cahoots, are working more closely than ever before, and last month the Taoiseach’s office flipped between them again.

Surely the point is approaching where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are divided only by the narcissism of small differences and a merger becomes inevitable.

What separates the parties is still there for those who know where to look — them that knows don’t need to ask — but for many of the electorate, paraphrasing the end of George Orwell’s Animal Farm might seem increasingly apposite, when the creatures outside looked from one to the other and back again, “but already it was impossible to say which was which”.

Cork voices on a Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael merger

According to Cork’s Gary Murphy, professor of politics at the School of Law and Government in Dublin City University, there were discussions in the late 1950s between Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael about the possibility of a merger, “but those talks never went anywhere”.

In the current environment, he said, there seemed little likelihood this latest coalition would bring the two Civil War parties any closer to a merger in the short-to-medium term. “I think, one of the lessons from the last government, and certainly the election, is that both parties cherish their history, tradition, and culture, and I don’t see this new coalition changing that any time soon,” Professor Murphy said.

“Certainly, the fact that in five years’ time when this Government runs its course, which, notwithstanding its awful start, we assume will happen, I think internal dynamics in both parties are still strong enough to resist a merger over the next two decades,” Prof Murphy said.

“Having said that, there was the idiotic first week of the last campaign, with the phoney war, with Fine Gael attacking Fianna Fáil, but I’m not convinced any new party would bring the best of the old two together or, with both parties currently getting about 43% between them in the election, I’m not convinced that it would go up, or even remain the same, with one party.”

Cork South Central’s two newest Civil War party TDs showed zero appetite for a merger when asked by The Echo.

Fine Gael’s Jerry Buttimer, elected to Dáil Éireann for Cork South Central in November, and a 17-year Oireachtas veteran, said both parties have distinct identities and ideologies, and it was important that they continued as separate entities.

Mr Buttimer said Alan Dukes, Fine Gael leader from 1987 to 1990, had been criticised for his Tallaght strategy of conditional support for the then Fianna Fáil government, as had Micheál Martin for his confidence-and-supply agreement with the Fine Gael-led minority government of 2016 to 2020, but “both demonstrated that the centre in Irish politics must hold and we do need a government that will deliver, and can act responsibly and implement policies that will ensure we have a country that is equitable and fair”.

Mr Buttimer said the electorate was now used to the idea of coalition governments.

“I do believe, however, from a Fine Gael perspective, that it’s important that we stand independent as a (centrist party), and that we continue to be a pro-enterprise, pro-jobs, pro-employment, pro-Europe party that puts people at the heart of what we do,” he said.

A first-time Fianna Fáil TD for Cork South Central, Seámus McGrath, also said he did not believe the two parties should amalgamate.

“Clearly, we’re both centre-ground parties, I would argue that Fianna Fáil is slightly left of centre, Fine Gael is slightly right of centre. Clearly, we have different approaches — you only have to look at the election manifestoes to see that — but, obviously, we are both centre-ground parties that can work well together in government.

“I do believe that it is absolutely for the benefit of politics and democracy in this country that both parties should stay distinct entities,” Mr McGrath said.