- Location
- Tamaki Makaurau
National Progressive Democrats
I promised to tell the rest of Noel Browne’s story back in the Clann na Poblachta post, and here it is. After being forced to drop the Mother and Child Scheme by the Church and abandoned to his fate by the rest of the Cabinet, including his party leader Sean MacBride, he had little recourse but to become an Independent in Opposition. At the 1951 election, when CnaP dropped towards the waterline, Browne was re-elected under his new affiliation – the first of many.
At this election, he was part of a bloc of so-called ‘Brownite Independents’ including the incumbents Captain Peadar Cowan, who had resigned from the Clann over a previous dispute with MacBride, and Jack McQuillan, a Roscommon radical who had followed Browne into Opposition over Mother and Child. McQuillan (who was a former GAA player recruited by noted non-GAA-fan Sean MacBride to be a vote-repository for an ex-IRA candidate but ended up outpolling his supposed ally) is often thought of as part of a political Siamese twin with Browne, but this isn’t quite true. While Browne revelled in public attention and Socialism, McQuillan was quieter and believed that people “voted for Browne despite his Socialism, not because of it”. The fourth Brownite was Michael ffrench-O’Carroll, a new TD who had been elected to Dublin Corporation in 1950 on the Clann na Poblachta ticket.
The 1951 election resulted in a hung Dail, and the Brownites held the balance of power. The coalition parties tried hard to recruit them, but the betrayal over Mother and Child still stung, and they ended up backing Fianna Fail to return – and this term was one of the most woeful Fianna Fail Governments ever. Mismanagement and economic conservatism played havoc with the Irish economy. Despite all this, Noel Browne and Michael ffrench-O’Carroll both joined Fianna Fail while the other two remained Independents (another way of telling Browne and McQuillan apart). Browne’s main reason for such unnecessary loyalty was that FF essentially passed the same Health Act he’d wanted to pass in the previous Government.
Browne, Cowan and ffrench-O’Carroll were all defeated in 1954 on account of the unpopularity of the Government they supported. Browne, however, was now a member of the FF national Exec and felt assured of his glowing future – until his local party failed to select him in 1957. His Exec mates weren’t bothered about overruling the selection (although they had the right to do so) so he stormed off to become an Independent candidate, under which guise he returned to his rightful place alongside Jack McQuillan in the Dail.
Browne had been keen to start a new left-wing party for a while now. Before joining CnaP, he’d considered joining Labour, but felt that his middle-class background would be impossible to overcome: the first Labour TD with a university education was elected in 1965. He then tried to join Labour in the 1950s, but was rejected on account of his Socialism (no Irish Labour Leader used the word ‘Socialism’ until the mid-60s out of fear the Church would excommunicate them again like they had in the 30s), the embarrassment he’d caused to the Inter-Party Government over Mother and Child, and the fact that he wasn’t a trade union member (the Irish Medical Association didn’t count for their purposes). Faced with the impossibility of joining Labour, his only options were FF or a new party.
This new party was founded in 1958 as the National Progressive Democrats, which wasn’t hugely more left-wing than Labour, and whose founding statement was so platitudinous that it didn’t attract much press attention. Moreover, it only had two TDs (Browne and McQuillan) and had hardly any members or constituency organisation apart from that of McQuillan in Roscommon. McQuillan had been the only CnaP TD to do the then-common thing and stand for the Council as well in order to be a more effective builder of roads. Browne barely had a constituency support base at all and neglected his casework.
In the Dail, though, the pair were redoubtable. They asked about 17% of all ministerial questions between them, prompting the Taoiseach to describe them as the “real opposition”. More importantly, their domination of Question Time prompted a rewrite of the standing orders to let other people have a turn – an amendment which is still in force today.
Despite minimal organisation, the NPDs did manage to stand a candidate in the dramatic Dublin South-Central by-election of 1958. Their candidate was Noel Hartnett, a former FF hack who had been campaign manager for Clann na Poblachta in 1948 and then fallen out with Sean MacBride (are you sensing a pattern here?) over MacBride’s decision not to furnish Hartnett with a promised Seanad seat and to instead hand the seat to a Protestant with no obvious Republican sympathies at that time. The by-election involved major sectarian bloodletting between the parties of the left, with Labour and Hartnett joined in the hustings by Sean MacBride, who had lost his seat at the previous election. NPD volunteers were among the worst offenders in a contest which was so dirty and shabby that only 34% of the voters were inspired to go to the polls. Hartnett came last with 15%, which wasn’t too bad, but he didn’t have the chance to build on this result as he died before the next general election.
In that general election, the NPD retained the seats of Browne and McQuillan. Their only other candidate was a female Councillor who had been the only NPD Council candidate outside of McQuillan’s particular bit of Roscommon. It’s fair to say that the Party barely had any sort of existence whatsoever. As such, it was no great loss when Browne and McQuillan finally broke down the resolve of the Labour Party in 1962. Labour was moving leftward anyway now that Norton had been deposed as Leader (however, he remained in the Leader’s office he’d occupied for 28 years until he died, with his replacement, Brendan Corish, having to settle for a smaller desk off to the side of the room) so entrance of two genuine left-wingers was a signal to the electorate. Labour was acutely aware that it had little support in Dublin due to the preponderance of conservative rural semi-Independent TDs in the PLP, which meant that gaining Browne was quite a big story, even though they’d rejected yet another membership application only eighteen months before.
As a side note, one National Progressive Democrat activist in the Dublin South-Central by-election was David Thornley, who later became a Labour TD in Dublin (benefiting from the breakthrough into Dublin in the 60s) and an opponent of Noel Browne within the PLP.
I promised to tell the rest of Noel Browne’s story back in the Clann na Poblachta post, and here it is. After being forced to drop the Mother and Child Scheme by the Church and abandoned to his fate by the rest of the Cabinet, including his party leader Sean MacBride, he had little recourse but to become an Independent in Opposition. At the 1951 election, when CnaP dropped towards the waterline, Browne was re-elected under his new affiliation – the first of many.
At this election, he was part of a bloc of so-called ‘Brownite Independents’ including the incumbents Captain Peadar Cowan, who had resigned from the Clann over a previous dispute with MacBride, and Jack McQuillan, a Roscommon radical who had followed Browne into Opposition over Mother and Child. McQuillan (who was a former GAA player recruited by noted non-GAA-fan Sean MacBride to be a vote-repository for an ex-IRA candidate but ended up outpolling his supposed ally) is often thought of as part of a political Siamese twin with Browne, but this isn’t quite true. While Browne revelled in public attention and Socialism, McQuillan was quieter and believed that people “voted for Browne despite his Socialism, not because of it”. The fourth Brownite was Michael ffrench-O’Carroll, a new TD who had been elected to Dublin Corporation in 1950 on the Clann na Poblachta ticket.
The 1951 election resulted in a hung Dail, and the Brownites held the balance of power. The coalition parties tried hard to recruit them, but the betrayal over Mother and Child still stung, and they ended up backing Fianna Fail to return – and this term was one of the most woeful Fianna Fail Governments ever. Mismanagement and economic conservatism played havoc with the Irish economy. Despite all this, Noel Browne and Michael ffrench-O’Carroll both joined Fianna Fail while the other two remained Independents (another way of telling Browne and McQuillan apart). Browne’s main reason for such unnecessary loyalty was that FF essentially passed the same Health Act he’d wanted to pass in the previous Government.
Browne, Cowan and ffrench-O’Carroll were all defeated in 1954 on account of the unpopularity of the Government they supported. Browne, however, was now a member of the FF national Exec and felt assured of his glowing future – until his local party failed to select him in 1957. His Exec mates weren’t bothered about overruling the selection (although they had the right to do so) so he stormed off to become an Independent candidate, under which guise he returned to his rightful place alongside Jack McQuillan in the Dail.
Browne had been keen to start a new left-wing party for a while now. Before joining CnaP, he’d considered joining Labour, but felt that his middle-class background would be impossible to overcome: the first Labour TD with a university education was elected in 1965. He then tried to join Labour in the 1950s, but was rejected on account of his Socialism (no Irish Labour Leader used the word ‘Socialism’ until the mid-60s out of fear the Church would excommunicate them again like they had in the 30s), the embarrassment he’d caused to the Inter-Party Government over Mother and Child, and the fact that he wasn’t a trade union member (the Irish Medical Association didn’t count for their purposes). Faced with the impossibility of joining Labour, his only options were FF or a new party.
This new party was founded in 1958 as the National Progressive Democrats, which wasn’t hugely more left-wing than Labour, and whose founding statement was so platitudinous that it didn’t attract much press attention. Moreover, it only had two TDs (Browne and McQuillan) and had hardly any members or constituency organisation apart from that of McQuillan in Roscommon. McQuillan had been the only CnaP TD to do the then-common thing and stand for the Council as well in order to be a more effective builder of roads. Browne barely had a constituency support base at all and neglected his casework.
In the Dail, though, the pair were redoubtable. They asked about 17% of all ministerial questions between them, prompting the Taoiseach to describe them as the “real opposition”. More importantly, their domination of Question Time prompted a rewrite of the standing orders to let other people have a turn – an amendment which is still in force today.
Despite minimal organisation, the NPDs did manage to stand a candidate in the dramatic Dublin South-Central by-election of 1958. Their candidate was Noel Hartnett, a former FF hack who had been campaign manager for Clann na Poblachta in 1948 and then fallen out with Sean MacBride (are you sensing a pattern here?) over MacBride’s decision not to furnish Hartnett with a promised Seanad seat and to instead hand the seat to a Protestant with no obvious Republican sympathies at that time. The by-election involved major sectarian bloodletting between the parties of the left, with Labour and Hartnett joined in the hustings by Sean MacBride, who had lost his seat at the previous election. NPD volunteers were among the worst offenders in a contest which was so dirty and shabby that only 34% of the voters were inspired to go to the polls. Hartnett came last with 15%, which wasn’t too bad, but he didn’t have the chance to build on this result as he died before the next general election.
In that general election, the NPD retained the seats of Browne and McQuillan. Their only other candidate was a female Councillor who had been the only NPD Council candidate outside of McQuillan’s particular bit of Roscommon. It’s fair to say that the Party barely had any sort of existence whatsoever. As such, it was no great loss when Browne and McQuillan finally broke down the resolve of the Labour Party in 1962. Labour was moving leftward anyway now that Norton had been deposed as Leader (however, he remained in the Leader’s office he’d occupied for 28 years until he died, with his replacement, Brendan Corish, having to settle for a smaller desk off to the side of the room) so entrance of two genuine left-wingers was a signal to the electorate. Labour was acutely aware that it had little support in Dublin due to the preponderance of conservative rural semi-Independent TDs in the PLP, which meant that gaining Browne was quite a big story, even though they’d rejected yet another membership application only eighteen months before.
As a side note, one National Progressive Democrat activist in the Dublin South-Central by-election was David Thornley, who later became a Labour TD in Dublin (benefiting from the breakthrough into Dublin in the 60s) and an opponent of Noel Browne within the PLP.