When, in mid-May, the government decided to call a general election, Lionel Booth, one of the two sitting Fianna Fáil TDs in the Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown constituency, announced, without warning, that the priorities of family business meant he could not be a candidate in the election.
As he was a well-respected TD, if not a great vote gatherer, this withdrawal in a multi-seat constituency in which Fianna Fáil had two seats created a real difficulty for the party. David Andrews, the young TD elected for the first time at the previous election, looked likely to continue to be a great vote gatherer, but, under the electoral system of proportional representation and the single transferable vote, it would be essential to maintain overall voting strength through a second candidate strong enough to stay in the count long enough to accumulate transfers. Suddenly the party was looking to me to run as a candidate.
Within the party, the fact that I had just been elected Constituency Delegate to the National Executive meant I was well-known and respected. My disappointing performance in the local elections was compensated in the eyes of many by the hope that my candidature might now appeal to former Booth voters. Lionel Booth had been one of the few Protestants in the outgoing Dáil.
At a constituency convention, at which the Minister of Finance Charles Haughey presided, I was elected the party’s second candidate after David Andrews. Carmel Gleeson, a Dublin County Councillor associated with the Irish Housewives Organisation, was elected to stand as a third candidate. There was a short, sharp campaign up to polling day on 18 June and Anne and I did everything we could think of, and thought expected of us, to identify voters and win support for my candidature. Family and friends were mobilised to help with canvassing, telephone answering, addressing envelopes and babysitting Justin.
While election campaigns of any kind are extraordinarily exhilarating and educational, they end with three terrible days, particularly if you are a loser. On polling day you watch the voters helplessly as you tour the constituency polling stations talking to officials and party workers. Then there is the day of the count, which you just want to be over. You hope you can find appropriate words to say when you are sick – sick with exhaustion and disappointment. Worst of all, there is the day after, when after weeks of hyperactivity and emotion you suddenly find yourself with nothing to do, or at least nothing that seems to be of any significance.
I had agreed with one of my new party acquaintances, Michael Yeats, son of the poet, that he would give me, as soon as he could, on the basis of the sorting of votes at the count, a first reading of the likely outcome. Michael Yeats, a member of the Senate with an extraordinary commitment to Fianna Fáil and to Irish language and culture, was widely respected within the party for his understanding of the proportional representation voting system. His mid-morning reading of the Dun Laoghaire count was that the party had not got two quotas and that I was therefore unlikely to be elected. He was right and it was a desperately long day.
As has been so often the case, the Dun Laoghaire constituency was not a good guide to the overall political situation and Fianna Fáil was returned to government.
I looked forward to taking a breather, settling back into my job, helping to entertain Justin – who needed very little sleep and was curious about everything – and enjoying my national executive contact with some of the reappointed Ministers. As the weeks went by and the Senate elections followed the Irish election, some of my party friends began to ask me about rumours that I myself might be nominated to the Senate. I knew that Prime Ministers were often criticised for using their nominations to look after party hacks or to create a base for failed Dáil candidates they thought could be elected to the Dáil at the next election. I could not see myself fitting easily into either category and did not feel it appropriate that I should do anything to seek such a promotion. In any case I knew little about either Dáil or Senate, I had only been in Leinster House once to see David Andrews and Lionel Booth about articles for the Borough Post.
Deciding that we needed a kind of a post-election break, Anne and I found we could leave Justin for a week in the care of one of the warmest families we had come to know on the political circuit, a postman and his trained nurse wife, living in a small cottage in Killiney with their own young children. We contacted the Russells, who were now in London, where Stewart was working with Reuters, and took up an invitation to go to stay in their St. John’s Wood apartment.
It was in this rather unlikely setting that I got a message from Florence to ring Mr O’Dowd, the Taoiseach’s secretary. The call to the Taoiseach’s Office brought the invitation to accept a nomination as a Senator under the condition that I was to say nothing about it until the public announcement was made. Thus began an incredible four-year mandate, with my nomination dating from 19 August.
The only brief I got from the Taoiseach was to speak up as often as I liked. For the rest, I soon found I would need both guts and wit to stand with the Taoiseach as the Lemass/Lynch approach, which had brought me into Fianna Fáil, was shaken by events in the North and rivalries inside the party.
Read more: 1970 – Wolfe Tone Commemoration
Neville Keery 