In 1977 the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government was soundly defeated in a general election in which Fianna Fail, still led by Jack Lynch, gained an overwhelming absolute majority of 84 of the 148 seats in the Bail. The coalition regime had exemplified a remarkable effort to blend the traditionally conservative Fine Gael Party, which included a younger socially conscious wing, with a Labour Party just returned to pragmatism after flirtation with unilateral radicalism.20 Fianna Fail was able to capitalize on economic problems that included fiscal indebtedness, inflation, and unemployment caused by external factors, such as the OPEC oil embargo, that were beyond the control of the government. Fianna Fail also offered to end or reduce a number of taxes that annoyed many voters, particularly rural voters, who were not included in the income tax net, such as property rates levied by local government and automobile taxes. In a curiously premature display of supply side economics, the party's financial adviser and later minister for economic planning and development, Martin O'Donoghue, argued that the restraint on taxes would encourage a remarkable economic recovery.
However, the magnitude of the party's victory enabled many backbenchers and newly elected TD's to grow restive and become less amenable to the government's discipline. In late 1979 Jack Lynch announced his resignation. He did so just a few months after the celebratory visit to Ireland in September by Pope John Paul II, which drew audiences in the hundreds of thousands. The pope's message entailed a plea for the rejection of violence in the pursuit of political objectives. But he also warned his Irish audience of the potential for the country to fall prey to irreligion and materialism as modernization and its accompanying consumerism grew. Lynch had expected automatic acceptance of his choice for successor, George Colley, the minister for finance, but, instead, the party selected Charles J. Haughey, the minister for health who had returned from his post-arms trial internal exile.
At first, in view of his identity with the irredentist-minded wing of Fianna Fail, Haughey as Taoiseach carried ominous implications for Anglo-Irish cooperation in combating terrorism and working toward a resolution of the Northern Ireland imbroglio. In addition, the situation worsened in Northern Ireland with incidents that included the killing of 16 by an IRA bomb in the Le Mons Hotel in Belfast and the ambushing of 18 British soldiers at Warrenpoint, County Down, on the same day that an IRA-planted bomb on a boat killed the Queen's cousin, Earl Mountbatten, off Mullaghmore, County Sligo. A further indication that there would be a cooling of Anglo-Irish relations was the return of the Conservatives to power in Britain and the selection of the first woman prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, in June 1979. Thatcher and Haughey held an exchange of meetings in May and December 1980. Some observers, especially in the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs, began talking of shifting the emphasis on resolv-
Evidence of the contradictory currents at work in the country during the time of the coalition were the Supreme Court ruling in 1973 that legislation prohibiting the importation of contraceptives was unconstitutional, a 1974 vote by Cosgrave and a few others to defeat legislation proposed by his own government to allow the sale of contraceptives, the removal the same year of the Irish language requirement for civil service positions, the celebration of the canonization in 1975 of Oliver Plunkett by Pope Paul VI, another Supreme Court ruling the same year declaring the exemption of women from jury service as unconstitutional, and 1976 legislation removing the requirement that adoptive parents be of the same religion as the natural parents.
Ing the Northern Ireland problem from finding a solution within Northern Ireland toward securing a solution on a London-Dublin axis.
However, another development to be overcome involved the intensification of protest by republican prisoners in Northern Ireland, who balked at not having the special category status allowed to those interned earlier. Those convicted under the Diplock rules were treated as any ordinary prisoner in terms of prison regime and clothing. Those refusing to wear prison garb were confined to their cells. They covered themselves with blankets, a gesture emulated in marches and other protests by sympathizers outside the prison and even outside Northern Ireland, even by some in the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City. The protest moved to a new stage when the prisoners began to cover the walls of their cells in which they were confined with their own excrement, which would be periodically hosed down by not too gentle prison staff. By October 1980 a number of the imprisoned protesters went on a hunger strike. The strike was called off after several months with the expectation that their demands would be satisfied. But when the amount of expected concessions were not in fact achieved, a new hunger strike began in March. This time the participants would strike individually in intervals, guaranteeing the continuation of the protest well beyond the death of single strikers. The first striker, Bobby Sands, was also nominated and elected to the House of Commons in a Fermanagh-South Tyrone by-election. Serious disorders and some deaths accompanied his death the following month.
In June a general election in the Republic of Ireland (the membership of the Dail had increased from 148 to 166 to reflect population growth) resulted in a near dead heat. Fianna Fail lost both its absolute majority as well as a number of its seats, dropping from 84 to 78, while Fine Gael, led since 1977 by Garret FitzGerald, climbed from 43 to 65 seats. Those 65 votes, the 15 seats gained by Labour, and the votes of three independents, enabled FitzGerald to form a coalition government. Fianna Fail was hurt especially by the loss of two seats to two of the hunger strikers, whose names had been placed in nomination. The intensity of feeling at the time prompted many hard-line irredentist voters in the republic to turn their animosity toward Haughey, who disappointed them, than to the coalition, from which they had no expectations.
FitzGerald's government sought to soften Thatcher's opposition to concessions, as she regarded the prisoners as criminals and not entitled to such, despite the pleas of many in the Northern Ireland Catholic hierarchy, particularly the cardinal archbishop of Armagh, Tomas O'Fiaich, that the prisoners were young men who in ordinary circumstances would not be criminals. Before the strike was finally called off in September after certain disguised concessions, such as prisoner uniforms that looked increasingly like ordinary clothes, nine others had gone to their deaths and scores were killed in the disturbances that followed the deaths of the strikers. Then, two months later, FitzGerald and Thatcher established the Anglo-Irish Intergovernmental Council, which provided a more regular interchange between the governments rather than the occasional contacts that amounted to ad hoc responses to crises.
However, before much could be done along these lines, the FitzGerald-led coalition government fell from power in February 1982 when some of its independent supporters refused to vote for an increase in VAT taxes on children's shoes. A leading Fianna Fail figure, Brian Lenihan, made an inappropriate request for President Hillery to not dissolve the Dail and allow Haughey to form a government. However, the dissolution did take place and another general election was held, at which it Fianna Fail gained three additional seats. That gain and the votes of several independents, including members of Sinn Fein, the Workers' Party, and an inner-city Dublin community candidate, enabled Haughey to form a government.
World History
