Poor PDs

I have noted Pat Rabbitte’s comments about the knowledge of the poor amongst the ranks of the PDs. He seems so unaware that there are poor PD supporters, in many cases down to their last million, who are being crippled by a taxation system which punishes effort while rewarding the work-shy, the poor, the old and the crippled.

There were poor people in the PDs at the start. I know, I was one of them; look, we all make mistakes, OK? I was a refugee from the urine-stained rank hero-worship of Charles Haughey’s Fianna Fail, just waiting for power to fall into its lap like a rotten apple so that its more “active” members could luxuriate in the trophies of government. If only I had remained; I’d be rich by now.

There were those who, way back then at the start of 1986, were looking for a new start in Irish politics. Yet I, along with other people who were not born with silver penises in their mouths, were soon made aware that we were not welcome in the five-star, gilt-edged ambiance of the PDs. I even attended the first conference. For such an upper-crust party, I cannot to this day understand why it was held in such an admittedly dingy setting as the National Stadium, a venue more given to, let’s face it, working class pugilistic pursuits. You would not find a good PDer admitting to ever having been in the ring, would you?

But it was this which finally made me turn my back on the PDs. The trenchant, shrill, right-wing tone of some of the speakers made me quite queasy, and then, when I went for lunch at the self-service place during an interval, who do I see in front of me only an individual with a long white beard. Now, I’ve always had poor sight, but I recognised this figure immediately as Matt Doolan who boasted of the fact that he had fought with Franco in the Spanish Civil War. It was then that I realised that I was, politically, in the wrong place.

And during my admittedly short period in the PDs, I never earned anything on which I could look back upon with affection, not even a squeeze or a cuddle: the PD women were far too hoity-toity to have had anything to do with someone as proletarian as me; Christ I might have had fleas! They weren’t like some of the Fianna Fail girls. Stout heifers maybe but usually up for the ride after a couple of glasses of vino.

My involvement with the Progressive Disease / Venereal Democrats also allowed me to get up close to some of Ireland’s leading legal eagles, like Michael McDowell and Adrian Hardiman – without as much as smashing a car head-lampt. Frankly, I wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t a case of Rumpole of the Bailey: more Lily of the Valley.

I do remember experiencing something like satisfaction on one occasion though. What happened was that the secretary of the Fianna Failers in TCD (I can’t remember his full name only he was from Cork and he never shaved), asked me to come to a Cumann meeting. I remember the joy that swelled within me as I replied “Fuck off P.J.” The aforementioned was so right-wing that he made Michael McDowell look like Che Guevara. He subsequently went off the edge a bit, taking part in anti-abortion marches and stuff like that. I wonder where he is? Has he shaved yet?

Those were the days. Thank you Pat for bringing it all back.