Donohoe's Drift: Lord Henry’s role - or not - in Des O’Malley’s new party

While researching our files for this week’s fortieth anniversary of concerts at Slane Castle, we were reminded that Lord Henry Mount Charles also dipped his toes into the political hot tub, on more than one occasion.

Back in 1984, he sought to run as a Fine Gael candidate in the Leinster constituency, with the platform of concerns about the Sellafield nuclear power plant across the water to the forefront.

While U2 were busy recording at Slane Castle, Henry was trooping the highways and byways of Leinster, writing in his memoir ‘Public Space – Private Life’ that: “I endured the seemingly endless round of meetings and conferences, culminating in the Fine Gael Ard Fheis at the end of October. After all this, my level of tolerance was stretched to the maximum and I was tired of hearing what an impossible task lay ahead of me.”

Veteran Meath native former Minister for Agriculture, Mark Clinton, was the sitting MEP, and would be unlikely to be unseated at the party selection convention at Goff’s in Kildare on 10th March.

Henry was out by six votes at the convention, but the media felt he had more to offer.

The Irish Independent ran a headline saying ‘Lord Henry goes down fighting’ on an article saying he was the ‘hero of the selection convention at Goff’s at Kill, winning a standing ovation for a brilliant speech and will clearly be a force in the future.’

The pressure came on Garret Fitzgerald and the FG National Executive to add him to the ticket, but fate intervened, and he ended up in hospital with kidney stones, ruling him out of any running. It is unlikely Fine Gael would have been ready to add the Anglo-Irish lord at that stage anyway.

He did top the poll of candidates for the ‘B’ list, for replacement candidates should they be needed, and bizarrely, a group of Fine Gael activists approached him to run in the Laois-Offaly by election caused by the death of Ber Cowen, father of future Taoiseach, Brian, who was going to be a sure cert to win the seat.

The year before, the Slane peer had shared a stage with Gerry Adams in a debate hosted by the University College of Dublin Law Society, at a time when Fine Gael members were not supposed to take part in events involving Sinn Fein, an extension of the broadcasting ban on the party at the time.

Henry Mount Charles was drawn into Fine Gael by Garret Fitzgerald’s Constitutional Crusade, and the expectation of reform.

But then, the late Dessie O’Malley made his famous ‘Stand by the Republic’ speech as he was being banished from Fianna Fáil for voting against a Contraception Bill being introduced by the Coalition Government, in which “he articulated views very close to my own heart in one section,” wrote Henry.

“His speech led to his expulsion from Fianna Fail, and talk commenced of a new political party being formed to break the mould in Irish politics. If this happened, and it was firmly founded on the twin principles of creating a more just society and reforming the Constitution, it would be a breath of fresh air in the political landscape littered with the detritus of mediocrity,” he continued.

In March of that year, in an article in Hot Press, he asked had Des O’Malley the courage to take up the mantle.

After the Springsteen concert in 1985, Henry turned his attention once again to politics, and in an effort to flush out Des O’Malley, engaged with the media about the need for a ‘new departure’ in Irish politics.

He flew a kite, proposing a new party – with Des O’Malley, “the only person with sufficient substance and credibility to force the pace”.

Then, in August, he resigned Fine Gael, announcing that he would be launching his own political party, 'New Departure', in November, delaying it in a bid to see would O’Malley come out of the closet. At the end of the year, he got a whisper that a move was on, and that his activities were queering the pitch. The Progressive Democrats were born just before that Christmas.

However, there was to be no room for the Lord in the new party, as Dessie O’Malley told him that in the early stages of the development of his party, somebody from his Anglo-Irish background would be in danger of alienating some of this support in his Munster constituency.

Lord Henry did return to the Fine Gael fold, attracted to the policies of Alan Dukes, running in the General Election of 1992 in the Louth constituency (it is said party leader John Bruton would not have welcomed him as a running mate in the Royal County), pulling in 4,161 first preference votes. Despite this showing, he wasn’t invited back to the convention for the ’97 election, but that might not have been surprising after he hit out at John Bruton’s party for having “a blurred image and lacked a sense of direction and purpose” in June 1992.