Speech by An Taoiseach, Mr Brian Cowen, At the launch of "Judging Lemass" In the Royal Irish Academy, Dawson, Street, Dublin, 29th September 2009.
I am delighted to be here today to launch Judging Lemass by Tom Garvin. I want to congratulate Tom and the Royal Irish Academy on this timely and illuminating book which coincides with the 50th anniversary of Sean Francis Lemass's election as Taoiseach.
Lemass' career has been a rich source of exploration for historians. TK Whitaker, in the foreword to this book, notes "The appearance of yet another biography of Sean Lemass who died 38 years ago, reflects an abiding interest in an exceptionally able and dedicated politician. This is not to be wondered at. Lemass was, indeed a dynamic patriot of great force and ability."
Tom Garvin's work builds on the achievements of other previous distinguished biographers such as Brian Farrell, Michael O'Sullivan and John Horgan as well as the in depth studies on politics in the Lemass era by Paul Bew, Brian Girvin and Gary Murphy among others.
It is to Tom Garvin's great credit and testament to the depth of his research as well as the incisiveness of his analysis that this publication brings fresh perspective and further understanding to the life and times of a political giant of 20th century Irish history.
The story has been widely told how Sean Lemass in his own lifetime turned down overtures from a prospective biographer because he believed his life had "little bearing" on public events. There is not much Sean Lemass has said that I would dispute but I profoundly disagree on that point. I've no doubt that Lemass's viewpoint, in this respect, was shaped by a sense of modesty and, as Tom Garvin vividly makes clear in this book, Sean Lemass was very much a man of no fuss.
Although he was a well known public figure for almost half a century, Lemass was never comfortable in the spotlight or with the fame and attention that high office brought. The Irish Times editorial upon his death in 1971, described him as a "supreme pragmatist" and he was in politics, quite simply, to get things done. He was unimpressed by celebrity. He did not need public life for an adrenaline fix. In a revealing anecdote in this book, which is in itself character exposing, Lemass once said if he had not been a politician, he "would have opted to live a hermetic life and would have been perfectly happy to spend his days working out complex mathematical problems."
In reality, Sean Lemass would spend a lifetime immersed in working to resolve the many problems and issues which an emerging nation had to contend. And although he did not see his life as worthy of a biography, he has deservedly earned the sobriquet of 'the man who made modern Ireland.'
He was there in 1916. He was active in the War of Independence. He was in the Four Courts when the Civil War commenced. He was central to the establishment of the largest and most successful political party in the state. He was a member of the Government that gave us our constitution. He was a key economic minister. He was the Taoiseach who started us on the road to the European Union. He was the first Taoiseach to go to Stormont. He and Captain O'Neill sought to establish a brave new departure in North-South co-operation. He internationalised our economy. He set in train a new era of foreign investment and free trade. He was there for every key event for fifty years from the Rising to his retirement, as Taoiseach, in 1966. And even today, fifty years on from succeeding DeValera as Taoiseach, his pervasive legacy lives on.
This biography is particularly strong in assessing how Lemass's formative years in politics shaped the attitudes and beliefs which over time would themselves become the dominant force in moulding a new and more progressive Ireland. The politics of the Lemass family had traditionally been Parnellite and Lemass's grandfather had served on the City Corporation. Sean Lemass's father was also an active member of the Home Rule Party but Sean and his brother Noel had nonetheless been attracted into the Irish Volunteers.
As teenagers, both saw action in 1916 in an event that brought about a huge sea-change. Sean Lemass experienced at first hand the seismic and transformative shift that the British reaction to the rebellion had on political allegiances in Ireland. Lemass fondly recorded :
"When I got back home after the Rising I was very tired and I went to bed. I remember the next morning my father came into the bedroom with a great big green white and orange celluloid button in his lapel, which was his way of telling me he had come over to our side."
Sean Lemass was subsequently to play an active role in the War of Independence. In later life, while fiercely proud of the patriotic stance he had taken, he deeply regretted the fact that hostilities had proved necessary. Speaking about his role in the GPO, posted on the roof, he said he hoped he had not killed anyone. In this book, Tom Garvin records Michael Mills' recollection of the tears that came to Lemass's eyes when, as an old man, he was asked about his involvement in the fighting of 1916-23; he desperately wanted it to be forgotten and forgiven.
A key landmark event in Lemass's journey from young revolutionary to constitutional politician and democratically elected head of Government was the barbaric murder of his brother Noel in the aftermath of the Civil war. This more than anything brought home to him the futility of political violence. Lemass believed he knew the identity of the murderer but never sought retribution and instead worked for reconciliation.
In November 1924, Sean Lemass was elected to Dáil Éireann. As an abstentionist TD and, in Lemass's own withering phrase, a member of a "Shadow Government, becoming more and more shadowy", he was in no position to influence or implement progressive policies. Nevertheless, there was a stark recognition from him that Ireland could not defeat what he termed "the twin evils of emigration and unemployment" without significant improvement in education standards.
The supreme value Lemass placed on education is at the heart of a very humane story quoted in this book relating to his ministerial responsibilities during the Second World War. An official who worked with Lemass in the Department of Supplies had received a letter from a schoolboy whose father had been a taxi driver but had lost his livelihood when he had been caught misusing his petrol allocation and had it revoked. He recorded that the letter was
"written on pages torn out of a school exercise book, by a boy at school at Westland Row.... The father had gone to England to try and get work. The boy was trying to get a job as a messenger but his teacher had said that if he stayed in school he would get a scholarship.... As Lemass was passing through my office I showed [the letter] to him. His response was quite unprecedented. He asked for the file, and asked for a typist to come into his private office with him, and dictated a reply to the lad there and then. He told the lad to tell his father he would restore his petrol allocation there and then. He was also to tell his mother that he was to remain at school. And he was to tell his father, also, that if he offended further, Lemass would have no mercy on him."
Much later, as Taoiseach, Lemass would place a major focus on increasing participation in education at second and third levels, and this was given unprecedented political priority. Tom Garvin points out that one of his first announcements as head of Government was the immediate raising of the school-leaving age to fifteen from fourteen, with mention of the prospect of a further rise to sixteen. Lemass's Governments also :
extended the scholarship schemes;
doubled the primary school building programme;
achieved reductions in the pupil-teacher ratio;
increased places for teacher-training;
and,
established the comprehensive schools system.
In tackling today's recession, we do so from a much stronger position because we have an educated and talented workforce. The foundations for that were set in train by Lemass, who worked hand in glove with his Minister for Education, Patrick Hillery. Their vision was that no Irish child would miss out on receiving an education consummate with their abilities because their parents were too poor. Their work is a lasting legacy and it paved the way for the introduction of free second level education by Jack Lynch's Government and the development of the third level sector in Ireland. Indeed, as Tom Garvin points out, Lemass, after his own resignation, encouraged Donagh O'Malley's drive towards expanded and free education up to age eighteen.
As Taoiseach, Lemass surrounded himself with dynamic young Ministers like Donagh O'Malley, Patrick Hillery, Charles Haughey and Brian Lenihan. He seamlessly effected a generational shift in the leadership of Fianna Fáil which had essentially been unaltered since DeValera's first cabinet in 1932. It is instructive to note that Lemass had a deep seated belief in harnessing the energy and enthusiasm of our young people as a necessary source of renewal and vitality in our politics. In this respect, Tom Garvin brings fascinating new perspective to the split in Sinn Féin which resulted in the foundation of Fianna Fáil. Tom's research shows that Lemass believed the Sinn Féin organisation by the mid 1920s had stagnated because young people were not advancing through the party ranks.
This viewpoint reflects the pragmatism which Lemass brought to politics. He was, to use a modern term, a can-do politician who believed energy, activism and decisiveness were crucial ingredients in public life. He was also not a man who could be easily deterred by criticism and the risk-taker in him meant that he was never afraid to apply the philosophy of 'speculating to accumulate' to policy formulation or decision-making. With Lemass's formidable intellect and his canny instincts, it was normally a safe bet. In vigorously defending his political style in 1937, Lemass said - in a quote that inscribes the dust-jacket of this book - that :
"Industrial progress has been so rapid in the last few years that mistakes were nearly inevitable, but I do not admit that they were either numerous or serious. During that time, I acted on the principle that the only way to avert mistakes was to do nothing. As I did not intend to do nothing, I discounted the mistakes in advance."
Lemass's tendency to focus on positives - and not to get bogged down in the politics of recriminations - was also an essential component on his style. He innately understood that in difficult economic times, confidence is the gold-standard. In today's circumstances, it is worth reflecting on the fact that he saw confidence as a necessary pre-condition for growth and for prosperity to flourish. Tom Garvin argues that, in this respect, Lemass saw his role as "chief booster of the prospects for the country and chief dispeller of traditional pessimism."
Certainly, Lemass's speeches are full of appeals to the Irish people to believe in their own ingenuity and to believe in their own capacity to shape a better future for themselves. A stock phrase in speeches was:
"There is almost nothing on earth that the people of this country cannot do better, or as well, as other people, once they apply their minds to it."
And he had little time for those who talked down the country's prospects either for their own narrow political purposes or out of a lack of belief in the country's capacity to endure and overcome adversity.
In the late 1950s, Lemass began to execute the decisive shift away from self-sufficiency to an economic model that would encourage foreign investment and trade. Lemass had been the architect of protectionist policies but he had the vision and the intellectual agility to recognise that such policies no longer served our national purpose in a new emerging era of free trade agreements.
In the post independence era and indeed the post-World War 2 years, protectionism was considered necessary to build up our native industries. The 1930s was a continental wide era of high tariffs. For much of it, we were also in a prohibitive Economic War so it is a real measure of the success of Lemass's policies that an industrial manufacturing base was created from almost scratch leading to the largest increase in manufacturing employment in the history of the State.
Lemass's genius was that when protectionism had served its purpose and global economic circumstances changed, he was in vanguard of the push for free trade and the internationalisation of the economy. He could read the economic sands and he was never a prisoner of ideology.
For Lemass, "the supreme pragmatist, the whole purpose of politics was in his own words "to secure the highest possible standard of living for the greatest number of human beings in Ireland." That was his bottom line and he was never afraid to implement a policy shift when the evidence showed him this might be the best way forward. The question he would have consistently asked was 'what policy can get best results in circumstances we are currently in?' In the answer to that question is why there is no contradiction between Lemass the architect of Irish protectionism and Lemass the architect of the open Irish economy.
Tom Garvin, in reviewing Lemass's long career, observes that "the promotion of the politics of the practical and rhetoric of reality may have been the most lasting and important of his many legacies to the peoples of Ireland". His conviction about the importance of economic development as the key to social progress led him to be an innovator, a rule breaker and a shrewd student of the logic of events. This was never clearer than in his consistent pursuit of the implications of his realisation of "the extent to which our standard of living depends on international trade".
Alongside this clear focus, Tom's study shows that Lemass recognised the importance of public opinion and the desirability of a broad consensus on key development policies, that good government decisions came when elected leaders informed the public and reached mature conclusions in a public way. As Lemass himself said "in the type of democracy that we are developing here, where action very largely follows upon the development of public opinion, the building of a consensus, the influence of the grassroots is enormous".
It was this spirit which led him to enjoy good relations with, for example, the trade union movement. It was he who, with trade union support, established the Labour Court in 1946 which was a pioneering attempt to improve worker-employer relations. In the words of Tadhg O Cearbhaill, the first Secretary of the Department of Labour, Lemass was the "godmother" to the re-unification of the trade union movement in 1959. He would, I believe, be very sympathetic to the idea of maintaining a consistency of approach in the interests of the common good on this small island through what we have known over recent years as the social partnership approach. He was a strong advocate of fair play and respect for the established industrial relations machinery being used to the full and with its decisions being respected in order to resolve disputes. I believe this approach is as necessary today as it was in Sean Lemass's time.
I believe that Lemass would have contemplated the current crisis which we face as one primarily of solidarity and national purpose. He would have been very clear about the risks to effective sovereignty of the failure to address our own problems effectively and decisively, while being convinced of the need for our full engagement with Europe for that to come to pass.
He would, I believe, have welcomed the fact that we are having a public debate about handling our fiscal difficulties, supported by the publication of the Report of the McCarthy Group and of the Commission on Taxation. He would have seen the pragmatic necessity to identify and evaluate options from all those with a contribution to make. He would have embraced the message about innovation and the smart economy, and been hugely enthused by the spirit demonstrated by those gathered from around the world at the Forum in Farmleigh House in recent days.
He would have pushed for the greatest possible creativity and imagination in bringing about adjustments over the next few years in a way that puts us on a firm path to recovery. He would, in particular, have looked to the public service, at all levels and in all sectors, to act responsibly and as a critical engine of economic and social development, to find ways of doing more with less, and of re-inventing itself to meet the challenge of the moment.
That is the spirit in which our challenges should be faced. That is the approach which I have sought to bring over recent months to the conduct of policy in this most challenging period. We face huge difficulties but we face them with immensely greater capacities and resources than Lemass and his colleagues did at critical junctures of his long political career. The charting of his story of leadership and determination should give us all hope in these difficult days that firmness of purpose, commitment to the common good and the marriage of technical competence with political vision, will see us through.
Tom Garvin's research is extensive and I was especially intrigued to read how Lemass foresaw as far back as 1929 the immense benefits a European free-trade area with a huge market could bring to Ireland. Unfortunately for Ireland and for Europe the dawn of that era was still some way off because tariffs were the order of the day at that time. As Tom notes, the European nations, despite a general wish for free trade among financiers, were engaged in a continent-wide zero-sum game of beggar-my-neighbour. In those circumstances, protectionism was the only option for a small country like Ireland. But when circumstances changed a generation later, following the Treaty of Rome, Lemass had the flexibility, the wisdom and the courage to change tac.
At this particular time, it is important to acknowledge Lemass's centrality to Ireland's emergence from the international sidelines. His vision and foresight were at the forefront of Ireland's first application to join the EEC. In 1962, he insisted at the EEC's Council of Ministers that Ireland's rightful place was at the heart of Europe. He said :
"Ireland belongs to Europe by history, tradition and sentiment no less than by geography. Our destiny is bound up with that of Europe and our outlook and our way of life have for fifteen centuries been moulded by the Christian ideals and the intellectual and cultural values on which European civilisation rests. Our people have always tended to look to Europe for inspiration, guidance and encouragement."
In our time, we too have big decisions to make about Ireland's place in Europe. Lemass's generation understood that the whole basis for the struggle for Irish independence was to take our place among the nations, not to stand separate for them. In an increasingly globalised world, Lemass intuitively knew that Europe was the best route towards national prosperity and he saw the potential of free trade and free markets to develop this country.
Lemass made resolute efforts to bring Ireland into the European Union but our initial application was ultimately vetoed by de Gaulle in 1963. This was the greatest disappointment of Lemass's career. Tom Garvin makes the point in this book that although Ireland did not enter the EEC until 1973, two years after Lemass's death and seven years after he stood down as Taoiseach, the compelling case that Lemass had made, that our country would be stronger working together with Europe, meant that the Irish people were far more accepting of the idea of Europe, and this helped Irish senior officials to do well in the emergent, larger united Europe of the 1970s and beyond.
Our history shows that Ireland and Europe work better together. The Union has been central to our development and in turn we have played a central role in the development of the Union. It has been a dynamic relationship not one frozen at the moment we joined thirty six years ago.
We have held a unique position as the country which is known for both being a core, Euro-positive nation and having strong links to the rest of the world. For business which employs hundreds of thousands of Irish people we have been the place to invest not just because we are members of the Union, but because they could be guaranteed that we would be at the table both shaping and participating in the development of the Union.
Now we must decide if this approach to Europe will continue. Friday's referendum on the Lisbon Treaty will be a defining moment in this country's destiny. I believe Ireland's future success will flow from re-affirming our commitment to the European Union. And in an ever more competitive global environment, it is imperative we don't give the impression that we are turning our back on Europe and the policies that have served us so well. It is an irrefutable fact that every time Ireland has voted to support the development of the EU, our country has benefited.
In order for Ireland to remain at Europe's heart and protect our hard won gains at a time of world economic uncertainty, I believe this country must ratify the Lisbon Treaty. Our future progress is now in the scales just as it was back in 1960s when Lemass made the defining choice to set us on route towards Europe and international free trade. We too must make the right choice. The road we choose will not only determine the shape of our economy, but define our place in the wider world and the destiny of this generation and our children's generation for years to come. It is that fundamental.
In conclusion, I want to thank and congratulate Tom and the Royal Irish Academy on this outstanding publication about one of Ireland's most outstanding leaders. The subtitle of this book is the Measure of the Man and it is therefore appropriate to conclude with Tom Garvin's final assessment of Lemass's career. He states:
"There is a melancholy proverb to the effect that all political careers end in failure. Sean Lemass would not be included by Irish historians in that sad generalisation. On the contrary, he is generally regarded as one of the most successful Irish political leaders of his generation, or even of his century."
Those fine words are, I believe, a true measure of the great statesman that Sean Lemass was.
ENDS.