Against the Tide (27 page)

The medical profession heard from Dr Tom O’Higgins of the dramatic dissolution of my support on all sides in the Cabinet. In turn, the hierarchy was informed by Mr Costello.

Because I had heard nothing further from the bishops since my meeting with Dr McQuaid in October 1950, and had not been told that the bishops had not accepted my magnanimous concessions to their
objections, I was genuinely surprised to receive a letter from them on 9 March 1951, in which I was bluntly told that they were still intent on preventing the implementation of the health scheme.
They made it clear that their terms for settlement were ‘unconditional surrender’.

Mr MacBride insisted that I should call on Dr Michael Browne, a member of the Episcopal Committee. Dr Browne was a big man, well over six foot tall, his height enhancing the long black soutane
with its thousand and one split pea-size scarlet buttons. Meeting him, I wondered how on earth he’d have the patience to do and undo all those buttons. A concealed zip, perhaps?

The bishop had a round soft baby face with shimmering clear cornflower-blue eyes, but his mouth was small and mean. Around his great neck was an elegant glinting gold episcopal chain with a
simple pectoral gold cross. He wore a ruby ring on his plump finger and wore a slightly ridiculous tiny skull-cap on his noble head. The well-filled semi-circular scarlet silk cummerbund and sash
neatly divided the lordly prince into two.

He handed me a silver casket in which lay his impeccable hand-made cigarettes. ‘These cigarettes’, he intoned, ‘I had to have made in Bond Street’. Then he offered me a
glass of champagne. ‘I always like champagne in the afternoon’, he informed me in his rich round voice. He appeared ignorant of the social solecism of mixing cigarettes and champagne.
My feeling of awe was mixed with a sense of astonishment that this worldly sybarite considered himself to be a follower of the humble Nazarene.

Our discussion on the mother and child health scheme was cursory. He showed no sign of having any serious interest in or objection to the scheme other than its cost, though later he would
thunder that this was not so. Our discussion was mainly concerned with what he feared must be the increase in the ‘burden of the rates and taxes’ needed to pay for the scheme.

It is reasonable to assume that between October 1950 and March 1951 our opponents had intrigued against us ‘secretly and behind closed doors’. These meetings were designed to
undermine my position in the Dáil and in the country. Incidentally, the phrase, ‘secretly and behind closed doors’ was used by Mr Costello during his speech in the Dáil at
my resignation, protesting at my publication in the national press of the correspondence containing the details of the intricate process whereby the hierarchy and the medical profession had
undermined the proper authority of the Cabinet. There was no difference on this issue between Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil. In the sole comment which he was to make to me about the whole mother
and child controversy some years later, de Valera admonished me, ‘You should not have published the correspondence with the hierarchy’. This distinction about what the public should and
should not know was yet another difference between myself and the rest of the Dáil.

As I slowly progressed through the saga of my disagreements with the members of the hierarchy and heard their readily adjustable versions of what occurred at our various interviews, I valued yet
again the wisdom of my departmental secretary’s shrewd advice, that in any negotiations it would be advisable to bring a reliable witness. Brian Walsh, who had had some experience of the
ecclesiastic courts, told me that when these courts were first established some worldly wise lawyer priest had had inscribed within the precincts of the court the words, ‘Nemine Crede’
(believe no-one).

Later I was told, by impeccable sources, two strange stories about the mother and child scheme as seen from the side of the church authorities. The first claimed that Archbishop McQuaid was
harshly misjudged; a deeply committed churchman, utterly dedicated to his faith and its essential soul-saving mission to mankind, he was a simple and good man who had been manipulated with much
skill by Dr Michael Browne, who, it was claimed, had been in fact responsible for the preparation of the ten-point document sent to the first Coalition government in condemnation of the health
scheme. It is true that there were important factual errors in the memorandum which would invalidate its conclusions. Yet the case argued from these facts was a powerful plea from the church
against encroachment in matters of health by the ‘State bureauracy’. The second story was more remarkable. It claimed that Dr Browne ‘was afraid of me as a dangerous, Goebbels
type of man, deep and sinister’. For this reason, he did not discuss the scheme with me on my visit to him.

Demonstrably my episcopal visits were fool’s errands. My Cabinet colleagues, and especially Seán MacBride, well knew that the hierarchy had no intention whatever of supporting me or
our scheme. Possibly they believed I would be worn down by boredom, demoralised, or exhausted by the tedium and futility of the struggle. They may have believed that I might even be intimidated
into submission by the sight of all those croziers. Obedient to the last, my next call was to the diocese of Ferns, where I had an uneventful meeting with Dr Staunton. Politely we exchanged
pleasantries, and parted.

Finally, on 31 March I set out to meet Cardinal Dalton, of Armagh. He was a pleasant, withdrawn, scholarly-looking man. Our conversation was stilted, formal, and with the exception of one brief
period, banal and inconsequential. The Cardinal gave the impression that he was politely wondering what on earth he was doing sharing his luncheon table with this odd, earnest young man who was
clearly preoccupied with an abstruse and awkward health problem. The sole gain for me was the pleasant hock with the fish at luncheon, which I had arrived just in time to share with the Cardinal. I
suspect that he accepted the ordeal and decided to ‘offer it up’, as did I. There was but one reference by me, and none by him, to the mother and child service. It is important to note,
however, that the Cardinal made no attempt to answer the one crucial and pertinent question that I did put to him, about the use of Aneurin Bevan’s National Health Service by Catholics in
Northern Ireland. His disdainful reply smacked of royalty standing on its dignity: ‘We are prepared neither to apologise, nor to explain’.

My visits to the bishops were a wanton squandering of valuable time, both mine and theirs. I was merely a mendicant government minister uselessly pleading for the underprivileged of the Republic
with the princes of their church. The truth was that neither they nor I had anything of value to say to one another. A final decision dictated by Rome had already been taken in Maynooth, and
readily accepted by all members of the Cabinet, that they should rid themselves of this tiresome colleague who continued to believe in the principle of representative parliamentary democracy.

The procedure adopted by my opponents in Cabinet was for each of them either to ask me to their office to plead their point of view about the health scheme, or to come to my room in Leinster
House and discuss it there. Using every conceivable argument, they pleaded with me to change my mind about the scheme and to accept the bishops’ ruling as they had done. The Taoiseach, the
Tanaiste and Mr. Dillon were the main apologists for the Cabinet. All their arguments could be summarised by the refrain of Seán MacBride, later to be publicly recorded by him and by the
members of the Cabinet: ‘You cannot afford to fight the church’. My reply to all this was clear, simple, and consistent.

Repeatedly I pointed out to them that I had not made the law and that I alone could not make a new one. In 1947 the Oireachtas had passed into law the free no-means-test Section 23, under which
the scheme was to be implemented, following a full public debate in both Houses. The decision was later ratified in Cabinet in June 1949. I invited each of them formally to move in Cabinet that it
be dropped. Should they do this I would then be glad to re-consider my position as Minister for Health in the coalition Cabinet. None of them would take up that clear challenge. The Cabinet
response to my proposal showed that they were still afraid to change the no-means-test principle. The whole matter with them remained a political issue and not one of conscience.

The intention in Cabinet was, no doubt, that I would ‘bell the cat’ for them, and plead with the electorate on their behalf that medical or episcopal opposition made it impossible
for
me
to implement the free principle. The rest of the Cabinet and indeed the hierarchy could then avoid the opprobrium of such a shoddy political compromise. Politically they would
exculpate themselves in advance of any charge by Northern Unionists that Rome in fact ruled in the Republic. I had no intention of facilitating this escape from their dilemma.

So began what a civil servant friend of mine, Michael Mulvihill, called ‘the retreat from Maynooth’. We continued to work in the Department on the assumption that the scheme would go
ahead. I had expected that the Labour Party would be compelled to support such a socially desirable and badly-needed health scheme, but Norton was one of the first to defect. Because of Clann na
Poblachta’s repeatedly declared enthusiasm for the scheme, and their ‘revolutionary’ background, I did not expect that under MacBride’s leadership they also would desert
such a fine cause under pressure.

In dropping the scheme, the Cabinet was to have the full support of the medical profession and the media, with the honourable exception of the
Irish Times
. Of even greater importance,
they were to be supported by the power and authority of the church. Throughout the controversy, Bishop Dignan of Clonfert remained a firm friend and supporter of mine, and warned, ‘You cannot
win against the Catholic hierarchy. A few months, a year at the most, and you and your scheme will be forgotten. Look what happened to Parnell’. My helpless reply was, ‘Surely we have
progressed even minimally since that time. The Mother and Child scheme will surely not be forgotten with the same finality as has been Parnell’.

On 17 March 1951, back in my department after my visit to Armagh, I reported the details of that meeting to Mr Kennedy. Immediately I was told that a special meeting of the party executive had
been called by Mr MacBride. The meeting was already in session. Would I go across at once? This executive meeting, and the way in which each of us handled it, would be crucial to the survival of
Clann na Poblachta.

On arrival at the meeting I quickly gathered that MacBride was denouncing me, listing my deficiencies as a Cabinet colleague and my failures as a minister and as a member of the party; I was
incompetent, disloyal to the party, disloyal to my comrades, disloyal to Mr MacBride, and anti-Republican. Most inexplicable of all, for reasons of personal advancement, I had deliberately chosen
to pick a row with the Roman Catholic Church over the health service.

While it was true that MacBride had recently become distant in his manner with me, he had never spoken about me to my face in such offensive terms. Understandably I was dazed by the assault. In
the jargon of the republican movement, I eventually realised that I had walked into a cleverly prepared ambush. There had been no prior warning of the executive meeting. Unprepared as I was, there
was no hope that I could convincingly refute the wild charges being made about me. There was the further reality that on Sean MacBride’s own admission at least 85% of that executive had been
former members of the IRA; inevitably they were much more likely to side with their old chief of staff than with myself. There was little doubt that, much in the style of the old court-martial, the
‘trial’ would conclude with all charges ‘proved against me’. Following a formal vote, passed by the ‘democratically elected’ party executive, I would be found
guilty on all counts. The executive of the party would then pass a vote of ‘no confidence’ in their Minister of Health. I could not allow this to happen, although I believed that it
would inevitably happen at a later executive meeting, for which I hoped to be better prepared.

It was imperative that I leave at once to fight another day. I called on the chairman for the formal agenda for the meeting. Glancing down the list of items for discussion, on a point of order I
claimed that the agenda did not refer to my present indictment by Mr MacBride. This being so, and since I had important work to do in my department, I left the meeting, offering my apologies to the
executive. Jack McQuillan came after me, saying that I was under personal attack by Mr MacBride and should return to defend myself. I assured Jack that as soon as I was as well prepared as possible
for the inevitably hopeless battle, at the end of which I knew MacBride would gain my ‘final conviction’, I would call for an executive meeting. There could then be a fight to the
finish.

I
RETURNED to my department convinced that MacBride’s capitulation had removed the remaining impediment to the
Cabinet’s acceptance of the end of the health scheme. At the same time, MacBride had seriously underestimated the extent of the opposition the Cabinet would face from the public because of
their humiliating capitulation. I did my best thereafter to make sure that every public statement or declaration, every letter to or from the principals in the struggle now taking place, be
recorded in writing.

It is unlikely that the majority of bishops intended to pursue the matter so as to bring down the government. I had made it clear to the Medical Association and publicly in the Dáil that
I was adamant on the no-means-test position. Within days of my eventual resignation we were given to believe that even Dr McQuaid had been prepared to compromise on a peace formula put by a
representative trade union group, which included members from the North of Ireland. This was a suggestion that in order to meet the bishops’ principle that the service be paid for, we would
allow for the introduction of a single nominal payment of ten shillings by the pregnant mother. This would immediately put her into full benefit for all the provisions of the scheme. I indicated my
consent to this proposal and considered it to be well short of a principled compromise, on the no-means-test scheme. If it were possible to preserve the main provisions of the scheme, that nominal
charge did not invalidate my no-means-test principle.