W2B-019 PD formation-0.txt
7 - A New Party

On the night Des O'Malley was expelled from Fianna F&/ail a leading Fine Gael activist, Michael McDowell, was at home looking at television. Watching the event unfold on the news McDowell commented to his wife that if the former minister started a new political party he was sure to get a fair degree of support because the time was right for it. McDowell's wife, Niamh, said that if her husband felt that way he should make his views known to O'Malley. So he sat down and wrote a letter encouraging O'Malley to form a new political party and offering whatever help he could give.

Michael McDowell was an up-and-coming young barrister who at this stage was growing increasingly disillusioned with Fine Gael's role in government. He had served three years as chairman of the party's organisation in Garret FitzGerald's constituency of Dublin South East and had made no secret of his view that the coalition with Labour was a disaster.

To the deep irritation of FitzGerald, McDowell had used the occasion of his last speech as chairman, at the constituency annual general meeting a year before, to make his view that the party was going nowhere and he told his surprised fellow party members that he had decided never to vote for Fine Gael again if what they were offering to the electorate was a coalition with the Labour Party. In the Law Library he regularly discussed politics with Michael O'Leary, the former Labour leader who was now a Fine Gael TD. O'Leary had performed the remarkable feat of getting elected as a Fine Gael TD only weeks after quitting as Labour leader because of a humiliating rejection of his policies at Labour's annual conference. It did not take long, however, for disillusionment with his new party to set in and O'Leary was highly critical of the way the Fine Gael-Labour government operated. In McDowell's house shortly before Christmas 1984 the two men drew up a list of the seats Fine Gael would lose at the next election. They arrived at the grand total of twenty-one (when the election came over two years later it was nineteen) and concluded that there was no way of stopping a Fianna F&/ail landslide.

It was not long after that - in February 1985 - that McDowell wrote to Des O'Malley. He got no immediate response, but after Easter he was contacted by Fianna F&/ail TD Mary Harney, who had been a close ally of O'Malley in Fianna F&/ail and who also knew McDowell through student debates a decade earlier. She asked him if he was serious about joining a new party and he said he was. Subsequently McDowell invited O'Malley around to his house for dinner and the two men met for the first time.

In the meantime Fianna F&/ail friends of O'Malley were also considering the option of a new political party. Seamus Brennan, the former Fianna F&/ail General Secretary who had been an anti Haughey TD since 1981, Mary Harney and David Andrews were chief among them. An opinion poll was organised by Brennan and financed by Barra O Tuama, the Cork hotel owner and concert promoter, and published on 18 April. The poll showed that 39 percent of people asked were in favour of a new political party headed by O'Malley while 35 percent were against it. An interesting feature of the poll which was carried out by Irish Marketing Surveys was that the most positive reaction came from the middle class voters and large farmers. The strongest support was located in Munster, not surprisingly in view of O'Malley's home base and the sympathy for Jack Lynch.

There were mixed opinions at the time on the significance of the poll. Haughey dismissed it as irrelevant, but for those planning the new party it appeared hopeful, particularly as it was published only a few days after another poll which showed a big drop in Fianna F&/ail support due to the O'Malley expulsion.

In the following months, though, the steam seemed to go out of the plan. At the beginning of the summer Seamus Brennan began to go lukewarm on the project and appeared more interested in pursuing his political career within Fianna F&/ail. O'Malley's supporters in Limerick were also reluctant to get involved, most of them preferring their TD to stay on as a sort of independent Fianna F&/ail deputy who might one day be reconciled with the party.

Mary Harney was still a strong advocate of a new party. She went to the United States for the summer and when she returned she found that while planning for the party was still continuing it was beginning to flag. Brennan had dropped out, but another Fianna F&/ail TD, Charlie McCreevy, who had been a Haughey supporter in 1979 but had quickly become a die-hard opponent of the Fianna F&/ail leader, had become involved. Another to join in McDowell's scheme was Paul McKay, who had been treasurer of the Fianna F&/ail organisation in Haughey's constituency but had resigned in protest at the way the accounts were kept. He undertook a feasibility study on the launching of a new organisation. O'Malley, however, still remained very reluctant to commit himself to a new party.

A crucial meeting of the conspirators took place in Michael O'Leary's house in Wellington Road in September. At the meeting, besides O'Leary, were O'Malley, Harney, McDowell, McKay and McCreevy. At this stage O'Malley had gone very cold on the idea and told the others that they should do nothing for the present at least. Showing his impatience at the delay and indecision, McCreevy told the others that if the new party did not go ahead that night he was out and would have nothing more to do with it. O'Malley was a bit wary of McCreevy because of the way he had put down the motion of no confidence in Haughey in October 1982 without consulting anybody, and he was unwilling to respond to such an ultimatum from him.

A crucial factor in the indecision was the way in which the three attempts to remove Haughey had been botched.

"I think there was a lack of trust among some of us about the reliability of the others because of the way the heaves against Haughey had gone. At this stage each regarded the other as wimps because of what had happened before," said one of the plotters later. Some strongly anti Haughey TDs in Fianna F&/ail, like Bobby Molloy and Pearse Wyse, had had a stomachfull of conspiracies and were not involved in any way at this stage. A serious car crash in November, which could have killed O'Malley, gave him a severe shock and that put back discussion yet again.

While they waited to see if a new party would get off the ground McDowell and O'Leary drafted a divorce Bill. O'Leary introduced the Bill in the D&/ail but only five TDs supported it. However, it added to the pressure on the Fine Gael-Labour coalition which was theoretically committed to holding a referendum on divorce. Shortly afterwards the Anglo-Irish Agreement, signed by Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher on 15 November 1985, was denounced in the strongest terms by Haughey. The Fianna F&/ail leader had earlier dispatched Brian Lenihan to the United States to lobby leading politicians against the planned Agreement. This attempt to sabotage an Anglo-Irish accord infuriated Irish-American politicians, particularly the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tip O'Neill, and did nothing to enhance Haughey's reputation.

When the Agreement was announced the old divisions in Fianna F&/ail were exposed once again. The Agreement was welcomed by O'Malley and former Taoiseach Jack Lynch and on 20 November Mary Harney issued a statement in favour, saying she would vote for it. She followed this up by going through the government lobby along with O'Malley. Expelled from the party a week later she now joined O'Malley as an independent and continued to encourage him to form a new party. Harney's strong advocacy of a new party and Fianna F&/ail's utterly negative attitude towards the Anglo-Irish Agreement rekindled O'Malley's enthusiasm and he now committed himself fully to the project.

At a meeting in Paul McKay's house in late November the decision was finally taken to launch the party. McKay and McDowell leased premises at South Frederick Street. A discussion paper was prepared on the aims of the new party, to be called the Progressive Democrats. RTE reporter and former young Fianna F&/ail star Pat Cox had joined the planning at this stage and his advice counted for a lot with O'Malley. Rumours began to circulate in political circles by mid-December that something was up and the newspapers carried speculation that O'Malley was about to establish a new party.

The Progressive Democrats were finally launched on 21 December 1985. To begin with the party had just two TDs, O'Malley and Harney. In acknowledgement of his work in establishing the party McDowell was appointed chairman, which emphasised that the PDs were not simply a Fianna F&/ail dissident rump. Michael O'Leary had been willing to join but O'Malley thought this might give the impression that the PDs were simply a refuge for people who couldn't find a home elsewhere. So despite the fact that he had been in on the planning of the new party there was no room for him in it. It was a decision that the founders of the PDs were later to regret, not just on a personal level but because O'Leary, whatever his political inconsistencies, was a marvellous vote-getter and a potential seat was thrown away.

Gemma Hussey records in her Cabinet diaries how the involvement of McDowell came as a blow to Fine Gael. "Dessie O'Malley's new party, the Progressive Democrats, was announced today. Michael McDowell is the chairman. Will it hurt Fianna F&/ail more than us? It is depressing that Michael did this; it must be hurtful to Garret."

Four days before Christmas seemed an odd time to launch a political party but the timing actually worked to great advantage. The PDs dominated the headlines and news bulletins and O'Malley sounded very confident as he went on radio asking for donations of £ 150,000 a year to make the PDs a viable prospect. In the early days of the new year the party took off. Advertisements were placed in the papers on 2 January seeking money and supporters, and the party headquarters were inundated with people wanting to get involved. By 6 January over four thousand people had enrolled as members and £ 25,000 was contributed by public subscription. Over a thousand people attended the first party constituency meeting in the Marine Hotel in Sutton and the major parties began to sit up and take notice.

Haughey went on radio a few days later and expressed the view that the PDs were not acting in the national interest, but the crowds continued to flock to their public meetings. At these early meetings O'Malley hammered home the core message of the party - that the state was strangling the economy through an involvement matched only by the communist countries of Eastern Europe. He committed the PDs to cutting taxes as the essential first step in putting the economy right. To an electorate crippled with personal taxation, disillusioned with a stagnant economy and rising unemployment, the new party's message sounded attractive. O'Malley's imposing presence and Mary Harney's abilities as a speaker contributed to the air of excitement generated at those meetings.

It was a very unsettling time for Fianna F&/ail. A significant number of activists in constituencies like Dun Laoghaire, Dublin South and the Cork City constituencies began to desert to the PDs. The question was whether the deputies for those areas, some of whom had been close to O'Malley, would follow suit. There was a wide expectation in both Fianna F&/ail and the PDs that Dun Laoghaire TD David Andrews would switch parties and there were rumours about Seamus Brennan from the neighbouring constituency. Brennan, however, set his face completely against joining and in fact spent a lot of time trying to persuade wavering Fianna F&/ail deputies to stay in the party. In the middle of January when rumours developed that Cork TD Pearse Wyse was on the verge of leaving to join the PDs, Brennan and Bobby Molloy were dispatched by Haughey to try and get him to stay on.
