Could Paddy Leave off from Copying Just for Five Minutes': Brian O'Nolan and Eire's Beveridge Plan

'Could Paddy Leave off from Copying Just for Five Minutes': Brian O'Nolan and Eire'sBeveridge PlanAuthor(s): Steven CurranSource: Irish University Review, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Autumn - Winter, 2001), pp. 353-375Published by: Edinburgh University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25504882 .

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Steven Curran

'Could paddy leave off from copying just for five minutes': Brian O'Nolan

and Eire's Beveridge Plan1

In no time, of course, it became the index of your Irish intelligence to demand to know what was

being done here about post-war

planning. When the insurance ramp appeared in Britain, it was

considered very reasonable to inquire what was being done about

social security here. Your excellent Government, looking very

embarrassed, announced that planning was in full swing. Worse,

smaller and less representative Irish governments also produced

plans. Phew, what a

nightmare! Glad it's all over.2

This was how Brian O'Nolan looked back on the contentious package of

welfare reforms which had been proposed in the latter part of 1944, known derisively at the time as the 'Irish Beveridge Plan'. In his sardonic

retrospective, the scheme now safely shelved, O'Nolan outlines the main

elements of the controversy: the wider debate on post-war planning, conducted around developments taking shape principally in Great

Britain; and the reluctance of the Fianna Fail government to respond to

the growing demands for reforms within Ireland. He also disparages the speed with which these proposals took hold of the public imagination, aided in no small measure by a press keen to advocate change. For

O'Nolan the Beveridge Report was not simply flawed but duplicitous, an 'insurance ramp', and in his sequence of articles in The Irish Times on

the 'Irish Beveridge Plan' he attacked what he saw as the naive gullibility of the Irish for wanting simply to emulate the British plans. His critique of the proposals was informed by his experience both as a journalist

within the Dublin press, the sole forum for debate of the scheme, as well

as by an expertise in the issues themselves gained from his position as a

civil servant.

By 1944 the civil service career of Brian O'Nolan had reached its

highest point. That the author of Cruiskeen Lawn was also a member of

the Irish Civil Service was widely known to regular readers of the column.

Many of these readers would no doubt have been surprised to learn,

however, of the seniority of O'Nolan's position. Following his entry into

the Department of Local Government and Public Health in 1935, O'Nolan

1. The Irish Times, 2 May 1944. All references to Cruiskeen Lawn (CL), will refer the reader

to the edition of the Irish Times in which the articles originally appeared. 2. CL:The Irish Times, 14 May 1945.

353



IRISH UNIVERSITY REVIEW

was rapidly promoted to the position of Private Secretary, serving in

this capacity within the department between 1937 and 1943, at which

date he was promoted to the position of Acting Principal Officer. In 1948

O'Nolan was put in charge of the Planning Section of the Department.3 From October 1940, with the start of Cruiskeen Lawn, his daily column in

the Irish Times, O'Nolan began what would inevitably become an uneasy

marriage of roles as senior civil servant and literary journalist. In the

early years of the column O'Nolan was able to compartmentalise these

roles when he so desired, a remarkable feat which can be best appreciated

through a comparison of two very different documents for which he was responsible in 1948 ? the Cruiskeen Lawn Anthology and the Report of the Cavan fire.4

From the middle of 1943 onwards, however, we can begin to trace in

Cruiskeen Lawn a fruitful overlapping of O'Nolan's work as civil servant

with his literary journalism, the dealings of the one becoming the raw

material for the other. In many ways this is typical of a column which was firmly rooted in the day-to-day life of Dublin. The primary difficulty for readers of Cruiskeen Lawn, particularly of its polemical strand, nearly

sixty years later, is the sheer impenetrability of many of the allusions

to contemporary events and individuals, many of which have now

become the material of footnotes in scholarly articles. To set the value of

Cruiskeen Lawn as a document worthy of study principally by historians

and social commentators, however, would be to overlook its unique nature. Cruiskeen Lawn is a literary column, the hallmark of which is the

assimilation of such day-to-day specifics ?

events, characters, even the

mood of the capital ? into an imaginative context where fact is shaped

by fantasy. Above all, the column is satirical and draws upon a powerful inheritance of writers who, like O'Nolan, deployed a range of techniques to vex as well as divert.

3. O'Nolan was Private Secretary to Sean T. O'Kelly, later President of Ireland, and

Sean MacEntee. As Private Secretary, O'Nolan provided the link between the Minister

and his Department and, in a wider sense, through contact with other Private

Secretaries, was responsible for maintaining inter-Departmental stability. The post of Private Secretary is, Cronin argues, the 'hot seat' in every Department, one which

demands considerable tact, administrative competence and political judgement,

qualities which O'Nolan amply demonstrated. See Anthony Cronin, No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times ofFlann O'Brien (London: Grafton, 1989), pp. 95-7; 120-1.

4. Published under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen in May 1943, O'Nolan's

anthology, entitled simply 'Cruiskeen Lawn', offered a personal selection of his most

popular articles, written in English and Irish, and was published some eighteen months after Cruiskeen Lawn first appeared in The Irish Times, It is the only selection

of Cruiskeen Lawn articles made by Brian O'Nolan and, somewhat surprisingly, is one of the few works by him that remains unpublished.

In March 1943 O'Nolan was appointed Secretary to the Tribunal which enquired into the circumstances of the fire in which thirty-five children were killed at an

orphanage in Cavan. The Report of the Tribunal Appointed to Enquire into the Cavan

Orphanage Fire was published in September 1943.

354



BRIAN O'NOLAN AND EIRE'S BEVERIDGE PLAN

The polemical strand soon became the most compelling feature of

the column. The history of Cruiskeen Lawn in the early nineteen forties

shows a gradual move away from the anarchic humour of Blather and

Comhthrom Feinne? Increasingly, the wilful nihilism of this early humour was replaced by a far more calculated judgement as to satirical effect. By 1944 Cruiskeen Lawn was sufficiently flexible to accommodate issues of

the utmost social importance. In participating in the debate on post-war

planning, O'Nolan adopted a wide range of strategies, including comic

deflation, ironic juxtaposition, parody, and extensive manipulation of

the na gCopaleen persona. The most significant example of O'Nolan's polemical journalism is

undoubtedly his discussion of the wide variety of proposals for the

reform of Irish society which emerged towards the end of the war,

particularly in 1944-45. Dubbed collectively by O'Nolan as 'the planning

malady',6 these proposals can be divided into two main categories. In

the first are those which offered solutions for the short-term problems which Ireland, despite its neutrality, still nevertheless experienced during

the war. Others, such as Bishop Dignan's scheme, were blueprints for a

far more radical form of post-war reconstruction. Taken together, such

'post-war planning' embraced all aspects of social, political and economic

development and, as time went on, called for the maximization of the

country's resources within an increasingly coordinated and coherent

national policy. As Private Secretary within the Department responsible for monitor

ing and, where necessary, implementing such plans, O'Nolan had unique access both to the proposals themselves and indeed to the private reactions of senior members of the Fianna Fail administration, most

notably Sean MacEntee.7 As a result, he includes in Cruiskeen Lawn a

5. Brian O'Nolan was a student at University College Dublin between 1929 and 1935, in which year he was awarded an MA. Whilst at UCD O'Nolan contributed to the

college magazine, Comhthrom Feinne, from 1931 until 1935; he was made editor in

lanuary 1933. At the end of his UCD career he founded his own magazine, Blather, which ran between August 1934 and lanuary 1935.

For a good selection of pieces from both magazines see lohn Wyse lackson, Myles

Before Myles: A Selection of the Earlier Writings of Brian O'Nolan (London: Grafton

Books, 1988). For one of the most interesting accounts of O'NoIan's contributions to

Comhthrom Feinne and Blather see Thomas F. Shea, Flann O'Brien's Exorbitant Novels

(London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992). 6. CL:The Irish Times, 6 November 1944. 7. A writer of poetry and lover of literature, MacEntee was also a

tough-minded and

ambitious politician, one whose style of politics was characterized by 'acrimonious

controversy and by the use of caustic epithets for his opponents.' (Taken from a CIA

briefing document prepared for President Kennedy on his visit to Ireland in 1963.

Quoted in Dermot Keogh, Twentieth-Century Ireland: Nation and State [Dublin: Gill

and Macmillan, 1994], p. 251.) MacEntee was one of the most influential members of the Fianna Fail party. As

Minister for Finance in the early nineteen thirties he was one of the early architects of Fianna Fail economic policy; in 1939 he was appointed Minister of Industry and

355




detailed and expert analysis of how these proposals would alter Irish

society should they be implemented. Not surprisingly, the column is

permeated with the vocabularies and attitudes of reform and reflects

the planning 'fever' which swept sporadically through the press. Nine

teen forty three ended with Myles na gCopaleen putting together a list

of New Year resolutions in which he highlights the priority of 'post-war

planning' as an issue within Cruiskeen Lawn for the year to come. Initially, in 1944, the half-hearted, and frequently half-baked, nature of the plans

inspired only occasional pieces in Cruiskeen Lawn. As the debate for

planning gained momentum and direction, however, so O'Nolan's

discussion of it also gained in penetration and coherence. As O'Nolan

had predicted, 1944 was a remarkable year for the cause of national

planning, not least because of the status of projects now coming into

being. The most important of these was undoubtedly the National

Planning Exhibition which was held in Dublin between 26 April and

5 May.8 The year was also significant for the publication of several

influential documents, including Ireland's 'twin blue-prints for social

reconstruction ? the document on social "insurance" and the report on

"vocational organisation"'.9

The 'document on social "insurance"' followed two White Papers issued by the British Government earlier in the year, one of which

provided an extension of medical benefits to every member of the

Commerce, becoming Minister for Local Government and Public Health in 1941.

He was to remain in positions of high office until his retirement in the early nineteen

sixties.

Of particular importance to this present discussion is O'NoIan's tenure as Private

Secretary to Sean MacEntee between August 1941 and April 1943. In a cor

respondence with me, MacEntee's daughter, Make Cruise O'Brien, has described

the state of good relations which existed between her father and O'Nolan, a link

which she attributes as much to shared temperament as to proximity of political views. Perhaps most revealingly, she has described how O'NoIan's skills as a speech

writer were appreciated by her father, an unmistakable 'element of parody' ensuring that O'Nolan could be entrusted with the accurate presentation of the Minister's

thoughts. 8. The National Planning Exhibition was held in the Mansion House in Dublin, to

considerable popular acclaim. The aim of the Exhibition was to publicize the issue

of national planning as effectively as possible. The centrepiece of the Exhibition was a huge contoured map of Ireland on which visitors could see, with the aid of

cameras, how plans might appear in reality. In addition, the Exhibition was

supplemented by an extensive programme of lectures and discussions, together with a wide range of pamphlets and handbooks. For O'NoIan's reaction to the

Exhibition see CL:The Irish Times, 2 May 1944; also 10 May 1944.

9. CL:The Irish Times, 27 October 1944. O'Nolan reverses the chronology of their

publication. The Report of the Commission on Vocational Organisation was published on 18 August 1944, under the chairmanship of Dr Michael Brown, Bishop of Galway. The second document, entitled Social Security: Outlines of a Scheme of National Health

Insurance was published on 18 October 1944 by the Most Rev. Dr Dignan, Bishop of

Clonfert, Chairman of the Committee of Management of the National Health Society.

356




population, irrespective of income. The other, based on the Beveridge

Report, sought to provide a comprehensive plan of social insurance.10

Hailed immediately in the popular press as 'Eire's Beveridge Plan', the

proposals presented by Dr Dignan went further by including both areas

into a single, fully integrated scheme. In the light of subsequent events

it is easy to forget that Dr Dignan, Bishop of Clonfert, was one of the

foremost supporters of Fianna Fail within the Church, also that he had been appointed Chairman of the National Health Insurance Society by

MacEntee. As Chairman he had first hand experience of health care in

Ireland, having undertaken a painstaking survey of conditions through out the country. His scheme, originally read out at a meeting of the

Society, was an attempt to put the tenets of Catholic social teaching into

practice.

Bishop Dignan called for a fundamental reorganization of the entire

health services, creating welfare centres and clinics in place of the

frequently inadequate and unsanitary medical dispensaries. These were

considered to be a degrading legacy of the Poor Law and incompatible with contemporary Catholic thinking. In an article written ten days after

Bishop Dignan's scheme had been reported in the press, O'Nolan sought to give some sense of the sheer scale of the proposals:

There is a hospital scheme the like of which was never heard. Each

county is apparently to have an unnamed number of regional

hospitals, towns with population of 5,000 or over are to have an

unnamed number of auxiliary hospitals and there is to be an unnamed number of district hospitals ifi unspecified towns and even

villages. Every one of these institutions is to have attached to it a "Health Centre" with provision for radiology, opthalmology, den

tistry, massage and manipulation, electrical treatments, ambulance

service, child welfare, pre-natal and post-natal care, etc. (If these be

the modest tasks of the Health centres, I am not clear what goes on in the hospitals.) There is also provision for an unspecified number of specialised hospitals, convalescent homes, homes for the aged, clinics and pharmacies. In addition, there will be motor clinics

travelling about.11

In addition, there would also be a wide range of social benefits, including retirement pensions, unemployment insurance, sickness benefits of up to fifty per cent of weekly earnings, maternity benefits, widows' and

10. The Beveridge Report of 1942, a milestone in the history of social security, proposed fundamental reforms to welfare provisions in Great Britain. The programme included a free national health service, family allowances and social welfare from the cradle to the grave. Though popular with the British public, with over 70,000 copies of the

Report sold within the first week of publication, it proved less popular with

Churchill's government. The Beveridge Report subsequently provided the blueprint for British welfare legislation from 1944 to 1948.

11. CL:The Irish Times, 28 October 1944.

357




orphans' pensions, children's allowances. Together, these services would

be brought under the control not of the government but of a considerably

enlarged National Health Insurance Society. In the months following its publication, Bishop Dignan's Outlines of a

Scheme of National Health Insurance was resolutely ignored by a govern ment which has been described as 'almost virulent' in its opposition to

the scheme.12 In fact, the government's first public statement on the matter equivocated about its very existence: 'If by a scheme for an

extension of social insurance is meant a proposal substantially worked out in detail... the Minister can categorically state that no such scheme

has been submitted to him.'13 The statement went on to add, however, that a 'courtesy copy' of the report, presented initially to the Committee

of Management on 11 October, had been submitted to the Minister. After

months of silence, MacEntee formally rejected Dignan's scheme in

January 1945. In a statement to the Dail MacEntee replied to an enquiry about the fate of the document, pointing out that the paper did not 'take

due cognizance of the several very complex fundamental difficulties

which the author's proposals involved, that many of the proposals made were impracticable and accordingly no further action on the basis of the

paper would be warranted.'14 This, certainly as far as the government was concerned, was the end of the matter.

The reasons for the government's rejection of this scheme were not

given on this occasion, or indeed at any later date. But in a shrewd

editorial, R.M. Smyllie, the editor of The Irish Times, suggested that

Dignan's decision to release the plan to the Press before submitting it to

the Minister himself was 'incautious'.15 Given the circumstances, it was

inevitable, he went on, that MacEntee's reaction would be negative, and

that the scheme would become 'a bone of contention'. Whether or not

Smyllie's version of events was correct, his analysis, coming from the editor of one of Dublin's most influential newspapers, is important for

the way in which it went on to link the fate of the scheme with the

involvement of the press.

Bishop Dignan's resistance to government hostility was sustained by the knowledge that his proposals enjoyed considerable popular support.

As he observed in March 1945: 'The publicity it got and the favourable

reception it received from the public generally should convince the

Minister that the community is very interested in social security and the

social services, and is expecting and awaiting a national comprehensive

12. J.H. Whyte, Church and State in Modern Ireland, 1923-1970 (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan,

1971), p. 109.

13. The Irish Times, 19 October 1944.

14. Reported in the Irish Independent, 24 January 1945; see also The Irish Times of the same date.

15. 'Beveridgism', The Irish Times, 16 March 1945.

358




plan.'16 Learning how to mobilize public opinion was essential to the

future of the scheme. There is no doubt that Dignan not only understood

the importance of the Press but also proved increasingly adept at using it to his advantage. The newspaper headline 'No official action on

Bishop's Proposals' marks the start of a campaign by Bishop Dignan and his supporters to counter ministerial hostility.17 If discussion of the

scheme was excluded from the floor of the Dail, then it would be taken

instead directly to the people, courtesy of the newspapers. What followed was a struggle to establish which side could use the

newspapers most effectively. Dissatisfied with what he regarded as the

dismissive and entirely unsubstantiated rejection of his scheme by the

Minister, Dignan articulated his grievances at a widely publicized

meeting in Loughrea, calling on the Minister for 'informed, considered

criticism' of the scheme and for an explanation of the Minister's statement

to the Dail on 24 January: 'May I now publicly request the Minister to

state the grounds on which the scheme was declared "impracticable" ...

Under almost every heading I respectfully submit to him that his

sweeping statement proves nothing and that it is not true.'18 With

MacEntee due to address a public meeting on the 'Coordination of the

Social Services' in Dublin the following day Dignan's challenge to the

Minister demonstrated an acute sense of timing. News of what was

euphemistically dubbed 'the troubles'19 between Minister and Bishop was carried on the front pages of the major newspapers in Dublin that

morning, and no doubt made uncomfortable reading for MacEntee. In a

hasty addendum to his speech, which in turn was reported widely in

the newspapers, MacEntee reacted by denouncing Dignan's tactics,

accusing the Bishop of attempting to 'engage him in a public con

troversy'.20 He also sought to clarify the relationship between himself

and the Bishop, arguing that the latter, in his role as Chairman of the

Committee of Management of the National Health Insurance Society, and as MacEntee's own appointee, was not entitled to publish his 'recom

mendations' without the prior consent of the Minister. But if MacEntee

thought that this would silence his turbulent Bishop he was mistaken.

Two weeks later, in his most outspoken public statement to date,

published in the Irish Independent, Dignan systematically refuted each of

MacEntee's points, concluding with a terse statement of independence:

I repudiate the claim that I occupy the chair at "his will and pleasure". I am not "the agent" of the Minister, and when he says that I must

16. The Irish Times, 13 March 1945.

17. Irish Independent, 24 January 1945.


19. Remark made by the Tanaiste, Sean T. O'Kelly, reported in the Irish Independent, 27 March 1945.


359




not fail to observe my obligations to him "in any regard", I consider this is tantamount to his claiming complete, almost autocratic,

authority over the chairman and that I must consider myself if not "a stamp-licking Irish serf", at least a rubber stamp serf.21

In contrast to MacEntee's hostility, the attitude of the press was one

of enthusiasm. Two of the most influential newspapers, The Standard, a

weekly Catholic newspaper, and the Irish Independent, gave extensive

coverage to the scheme, setting out the principal details at some

considerable length. One of the issues which most preoccupied them, and which was also to figure large in O'NoIan's discussion, was the

relationship between the Irish scheme and the Beveridge Report,

published in December 1942. Bishop Dignan was keen that his scheme

should be seen as independent from that devised by Beveridge; and this was the line repeated by editors. The editor of the Irish Independent followed Dignan in declaring that the Irish scheme contained important 'modifications' to the Beveridge Plan, ensuring that the former were

compatible with a society founded upon 'Christian and Catholic

principles'.22 The Standard not only endorsed such a view but went one

step further in proclaiming the superiority of Bishop Dignan's proposals over the 'materialistic' and 'merely palliative' nature of the Beveridge Plan, deploring the 'taint of pauperism and destitution' that clung to

the latter.23

Reading these editorials, one cannot help but feel that the occasion for informed discussion was lost at a very early stage. As O'NoIan's

analysis of the proposals revealed, vital questions were left unasked by editors who, in effect, advanced little more than paraphrases of the

Bishop's own introduction to the scheme. In most editorial responses there seemed to be no real sense of the impact that Dignan's proposals, if implemented, would have on the Irish economy. To O'NoIan's aston

ishment, no pilot studies had been undertaken to evaluate the Bishop's

proposals. Unlike the Beveridge Plan, the approximate costs of which

had been calculated, Dignan's scheme had received no such scrutiny of

its economic feasibility. The Bishop did indeed acknowledge that the

costs would be high but argued that, whatever these might be, they should be met, 'at a sacrifice', by a country which professed to be

Catholic.24 In addition to outlining the financial inadequacies of the

scheme, O'Nolan also established that the Bishop underestimated the

constitutional ramifications of his proposals. Ironically, O'NoIan's critique

21. Irish Independent, 27 March 1945. 22. Irish Independent, 18 October 1944.

23. The Standard, 20 October 1944. 24. Irish Independent, 18 October 1944.

360




of the scheme was the closest that Dignan would get to a detailed

explanation as to why his proposals had been 'branded' as being

'impracticable under almost every heading' by the Minister.25 A no less affirmative, though rather more considered, review was

provided by R.M. Smyllie in The Irish Times. The scheme 'bids fair', he

argued in an editorial entitled The Social Services', 'to furnish the model

for the social legislation of the future'.26 As might be expected from an

ex-Unionist newspaper which still maintained close links with Ascen

dancy ideology, the new proposals provided useful ammunition with which to attack the Fianna Fail government. Smyllie argued that social and welfare provisions should not be permitted to Tag behind' those of

Northern Ireland (and, of course, mainland Britain). In opposition to

many of his fellow editors he emphasized the similarity of many of

Dignan's proposals to those contained in the Beveridge Report, and

concluded that while the government was unlikely to accept them in

their present form, it would no doubt accept a modified version which would be acceptable to Irish society. Support such as this, from journalists as influential as Smyllie, was essential for the scheme to survive.

Throughout the war, particularly during the period from 1940 to 1945, R.M. Smyllie was one of the foremost proponents for social and welfare

reform and did much to bring the vocabulary and issues of post-war

planning to the attention of his readers, Catholic as well as Protestant.

As early as February 1940 he had supported calls for the creation of a

national organization which could create a coherent policy of planning and development and was an indefatigable advocate for change.27 It

was as editor of The Irish Times that Smyllie had the most significant influence on the debate. Under his editorship, The Irish Times became

arguably the single most important forum in which those advocating reform could promulgate their views. The general principles of reform, and indeed specific proposals, were reported and discussed within a

vibrant mix of reportage, leading articles, and readers' letters, as well as

in specialist features such as 'Towards Tomorrow', a weekly column

which provided academics, scientists, and theorists the opportunity to

discuss a range of issues concerning post-war reconstruction. Unique among publications at this time, The Irish Times kept a window open not

just on Ireland but also on England, and beyond, so that the fullest picture of contemporary life might be developed.

25. Irish Independent, 27 March 1945. Dignan repeatedly demanded an explanation for

MacEntee's Dail statement of 24 lanuary in which the Bishop's scheme was, in his

words, 'branded' as being 'impracticable'. See The Irish Times and the Irish Independent, 13 March 1945 and 27 March 1945.

26. The Irish Times, 18 October 1944. 27. The Irish Times, 17 February 1940.

361




There is no doubt that Smyllie's voice was a powerful and often

inspiring rallying cry which could galvanize the public if not into action

then at least into a state of receptivity to new ideas. Inevitably his support for many of the planning proposals brought him into frequent conflict

with de Valera and with ministers such as Sean Lemass and Sean

MacEntee,28 Smyllie's most outspoken critic, though, was Brian O'Nolan.

Within the pages of The Irish Times itself O'Nolan sustained a line of

often virulent opposition to the ideas espoused by his editor. Enthusiastic

support in the one is counterbalanced by hostile criticism in the other.

O'Nolan openly refers to Smyllie's editorials, adopting a range of satirical

techniques, ranging from ironic impersonation and parody to invective

and outright personal abuse. This conjunction of the voices of Myles and Smyllie, as polarized as they are, printed on the same page of the

newspaper, must surely count as one of the most provocative features of

the planning debate.

Nowhere are the differences in outlook of the two men more clearly demonstrated than in their respective accounts of the National Planning Exhibition which was held in Dublin between 26 April and 5 May 1944.

Organized by the National Planning Committee, this was the most

impressive display to date of the work of the planners.29 In the aftermath

of the Exhibition a public meeting was held, on Saturday 6 May, at the

Mansion House in Dublin. This meeting brought together a wide range of experts and interested organizations, known collectively as 'The

Tomorrow Club'. It was chaired by Smyllie and had Sean MacEntee as

its main speaker. From Smyllie's combative editorial of the following

Monday, it is clear that if the Exhibition had been opened with de Valera's

non-committal blessing then it ended, in Smyllie's opinion, with an

attempt by MacEntee to 'pour cold water' on the entire enterprise and to 'create a sense of disillusionment'.30 To counter this, Smyllie pro claimed the emergence of a new breed of Irishman, one that, as a result

of the Exhibition, was enlightened in the ways of reform, had been

28. Sean Lemass denounced what he termed the 'yellow press' tactics of The Irish Times,

following its series of trenchant leading articles on the Transport Bill. See The Irish

Times, 22 September 1944; and 23 September for Smyllie's reply. One of the most

spectacular attacks on the newspaper was delivered by de Valera for what he saw

as the negative coverage of the Fianna Fail election campaign in May 1944. Govern ment intransigence on the issue of planning was a key element within this hostile

coverage. See The Irish Times, 11 May 1944; also 13th; 16th; 26th; 27th; and 29th for defence against the charge made by de Valera that the newspaper was 'encouraging

political anarchy'. 29. The National Planning Conference (NPC) was formed in 1942. Under the motto

'Ireland is ours for the making; let us make it', the NPC endeavoured to draw public attention to the need for post-war reconstruction. For one of the most interesting and detailed accounts of the NPC see the leading article 'Ours for the making' in

The Irish Times, 10 April 1943.

30. 'Light and Leading', The Irish Times, 8 May 1944.

362




invested with a new critical independence, and was now prepared to

make his own informed decisions about the future of his country:

The Irishman's mind has hardened during the last few years. He is less ready than he was to be sidetracked by nick-names, shibboleths,

misrepresentations. He no longer permits an obvious reform to be

damned by the labels "fascist" or "communist" or even "laissez

fair" or "Un-Irish"; he tries to find out whether it is a good or a bad

thing in itself ...

In complete contrast, O'Nolan's response, both to the Exhibition and to

Smyllie's article, questions such as optimistic description of the 'Irish

man's mind'. In an untitled article, published two days after Smyllie's editorial, O'Nolan depicts his representative Irishman, Pawd, one of the

Plain People of Ireland, as being disorientated in a world which he can

barely comprehend and baffled by a language^ which he is unable to

decipher:

It is my considered view that Paud keeping step with world hysteria in the belief that he is being "modem" is a woeful spectacle, is nowise

funny ... He has got himself a lot of graphs and diagrams and he is

beginning to babble about "built-in furniture" ... Give him just a little rope and he will have and go [sic] and demolish any decent

houses he may have and go and live in insanitary "prefabricated" shells, the better and the sooner to qualify for the new glass-brick sanatorium.... Eighty per cent of what has been put before us is

blatant imitation of what tremendous and strictly local revolutions have thrown up elsewhere and our

"planners'' have lacked the wit

to dish up even some native sort of jargon ... I admit, however, that

it would be a bit brutal to snatch his plans away from Paddy, even if he is holding them upside down.. .31

Above all, O'Nolan's analysis of the planning debate, particularly as it was presented in the popular press, is informed by an acute under

standing of the corrupting influence of language. O'Nolan identifies the

reliance of the planners on confusing pseudo-technical language and

jargon as destructive to informed and critical evaluation. These are the

constituent elements of the 'babble' which O'Nolan's representative Irishman overhears and automatically repeats. And of course the cliches

and jargon of welfarism can be added to this category of language,

including phrases such as 'from the cradle to the grave',32 'retiral

pensions', which O'Nolan is unable to define, even with the aid of a

dictionary, and schemes advertised as health insurance which are not

31. CLiThe Irish Times, 10 May 1944.

32. CUThe Irish Times, 10 March 1944.

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'insurance' based at all.33 Language has become an agent of obfuscation

and confusion.

O'NoIan's growing concern about the language of reform is presented in an article ironically entitled 'Irish Culture'. Published only two days after the Dignan proposals were announced in the press, 'Irish Culture'

refers to an article which had appeared in the Irish Independent and is one of O'NoIan's most trenchant attacks on the culture of reconstruction

and on the receptivity of the Irish to foreign ideas:

... The day before yesterday I read in a newspaper about a "threat

to Irish culture". A speaker at some meeting "gave

a warning that

Irish culture was threatened by an international culture ... make us

all the same drabness." Funny that this should appear in the same

issue containing an "Irish Beveridge Plan", in the same year in which

Pat has excelled himself in a disgusting aping of foreign technological and social catch-words: funnier that such activity should be desig nated "Culture".34

Always alert to alternative versions of what it was to be Irish within this

period of change, O'Nolan associates 'Irishness' with being blindly and

uncritically receptive to 'foreign technological and social catch-words'.

A more emphatic denial of Smyllie's optimistic profile of 'the Irishman's

mind' is hard to imagine. The crucial difference between O'NoIan's

attitude and that of Smyllie concerns the way in which foreign ideas are

assimilated. For Smyllie, this assimilation was the result of free and

informed choice. For O'Nolan it was 'a disgusting aping', mere 'imi

tation', with the Irish failing to comprehend the incompatibility of such

plans with their own 'local' needs. The danger lay in succumbing to the

'unenterprising copycat' mentality which O'Nolan felt was induced

through contact with foreign ideas. Far from there being a 'culture' of

reform, there was nothing more than 'blushing self-conscious foreign ism'.35 Indeed, as he famously declared in 1944, 'foreignism in its filthiest

guise stalks the land'.36 To become more and more 'Irish' was for O'Nolan

to be increasingly in thrall to the 'alien social nostrums' (including, of

course, Beveridgism) which were receiving such wide coverage in the

press; to be preoccupied, in short, with 'things that do not concern you'.37 The obvious method to counteract the influence of such 'catch-words' was to strip away the overlay of language in order to expose fundamental

discrepancies and inconsistencies in the document. In an article published on 28 October 1944, which was devoted entirely to an analysis of Bishop

33. CLiThe Irish Times, 28 October 1944.

34. CUThe Irish Times, 20 October 1944.

35. CUThe Irish Times, 13 April 1944,

36. CUThe Irish Times, 6 June 1944.

37. CUThe Irish Times, 21 April 1944.

364




Dignan's proposals, O'Nolan questions how the scheme would be

financed, a detail that had passed largely unexamined in the press up to

this point. Bishop Dignan's system was to be means-tested, and financed

through insurance contributions. Quoting from the document, O'Nolan

establishes this point at the outset: 'This new Society, it is emphasised, is

to be an insurance Society. We are dealing with an Insurance, and not with a Charitable Society. Members are not to expect "something" for

"nothing", neither can they expect to get more from the Society than

they put into it.'38 As O'Nolan went on to demonstrate, however, insurance contributions were wholly inadequate as a means of funding the level of provisions that Bishop Dignan envisaged.

O'Nolan's method of exposing the financial inadequacies of the

scheme is to confront the reader with a conspicuous discrepancy. He sets out the proposed health provisions, using descriptions which could

have been taken from any number of enthusiastic contemporary accounts

in the press, and juxtaposes these with a statement from the report

detailing how such provisions were to be financed. First, O'Nolan's

description:

The Insurance Institute feels that it is nonsense for an industrial

insurance concern to be occupied merely with national health

insurance and workmen's compensation insurance. Something much

bigger is needed ... The big new society must also embrace in its

warm mammalian bosom, they say, the following services, at present looked after by your poor discredited State, viz.: Unemployment Insurance; Widows' and Orphans' Pensions; Old Age Pensions; Blind

Persons' Pensions; Children's allowances.39

The next day he continued this line of attack, emphasizing the 'elaborate'

nature of the plans:

If we suppose that the average number of regional hospitals in a

county be six (say three for Louth and nine for Cork) we get a total of 192 regional hospitals. I think we have about twenty towns with a population of 5,000 or over, and if we allow three auxiliary hospitals for each, you have sixty

more institutions, some of them possibly a

stone's throw from the regional hospitals. Allow a total of 200 district

hospitals for the "selected" towns and villages (and surely one would be enough for a village, particularly if the auxiliary hospital is situated there)

? you get a grand total of 452 hospitals. (Have we

that many beds, even, at present?) And this, mind you, is only a fraction of the Society's benefits, coming

on top of generous cash,

maternity, disablement, and marriage bounties ...40

38. CUThe Irish Times, 28 October 1944 (O'NoIan's italics). 39. CL:The Irish Times, 27 October 1944.


365




In stark contrast to the 'grandiose dimension of the conception', O'Nolan

finds, on consulting the 'Contributions' section of the report, that no

feasibility studies had been conducted to establish what the plan would

cost:

I ... turned quaking to the section headed "Contributions" to find

what vast tolls on individual incomes and industry were involved.

On this subject there was not a word of information. We are told that this is a matter to be worked out by

an actuary!41

Sceptical of the view that the Bishop's proposals could be financed

through insurance contributions alone, O'Nolan goes on to establish that a significant portion of the funds needed would have to be obtained

from alternative sources of income, including 'the taxing capacity of the

country'. What, he asks, has this to do with insurance?42 In revealing this hidden tax element O'Nolan establishes the sheer unworkability of

the plan as an insurance scheme and reveals that Dignan's proposals and the Beveridge Report were in fact closer than Dignan and his sup

porters were prepared to admit.

O'NoIan's article of 28 October provides a good example of the way in which he exploits the comic resources of the column. There is an

unmistakable air of dramatic, even melodramatic disclosure, reinforced

by his use of italics, which highlights his concerns. Behind the hyperbole, however, lies a serious point about the impracticability of what is being

proposed, and incredulity that plans so extravagantly detailed should

have such inadequate foundations. But if Dignan's failure to calculate

costs of his scheme is met with disbelief then the incalculable damage which O'Nolan felt would be caused to the Irish economy is met with

genuine alarm. Referring once more to the document, O'Nolan catalogues just some of the funds which would be 'engulfed' by the scheme,

including those 'expended annually through State and cognate organs on "social services'", amounting, he suggests, to approximately half the

total State revenues.43 The Society would also be able to claim access to

the 'capital resources' of 'trade unions and other bodies':

The Insurance Institute, under its new scheme, is also anxious to

terminate, and, of course, swallow, the welfare arrangements made

by trade unions, benevolent associations, and the like ... Many trade

unions, companies, societies and organisations now

provide for their

members some of the benefits indicated in this plan, and have accrued large capital sums for that purpose. Would it be too much

41. CUThe Irish Times, 28 October 1944. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid.

366




to ask them to transfer these to the new society, as there will be no

need for separate schemes in future .. ,44

Even the money from the Irish sweepstake, 'the Sweep money', would be claimed by the NHIS. O'Nolan prophesies that 'With all the bullion is to be engulfed also the Plain People of Ireland'.45 Contemplating the

'fantastic machinations' of planners such as Dignan, he recalls his familiar

apocalyptic vision of Ireland:

Unless a halt is called ? and at once!

? the gigantic expenditure to

which the country is being committed will result in a complete economic collapse; inflation, famine and anarchy will stalk the land.46

One of O'Nolan's most significant contributions to the debate on

Bishop Dignan's scheme is his analysis of the 'extraordinary and sinister'

threat posed by the massive expansion of the National Health Insurance

Society.47 Dignan and his advisers failed to take into consideration just how far the 'autonomous powers and ... full and untrammelled control'

granted to the Society could be perceived as a threat to individual

liberty.48 In a moment of comic hyperbole, O'Nolan envisages the 'new'

Ireland as one that is 'full of "members" bemused with drugs and nurs

ing', with 'jack-booted secret police from Cork ranging the country in

"travelling motor clinics'".49 The new powers which would be given to

the NHIS in order for it to collect its revenues would lead, O'Nolan

argues, to 'the extinction of important liberties' and the 'regimentation' of the Irish people:

Regimentation by the State (I use the word in its ordinary evil sense) is a foul thing. What do you make of a modest proposal to have

your people kicked around by a "society" which is not the State?50

44. CL:The Irish Times, 27 October 1944. Quoting from the Report on Vocational

Organisation, O'Nolan highlights an area of conflict between the findings of Bishop

Dignan and those of the Commission on Vocational Organisation on this matter:

'The benefits provided by trade unions and professional benevolent societies for

their members constitute a very large and valuable form of assistance and one which is very efficiently and economically administered ... men give more freely and

generously for the assistance of those bound to them by ties of professional loyalty and comradeship. Moreover, they can administer such schemes more efficiently and

economically when they know the recipients and have immediate personal interest

in avoiding waste and abuse ...'


46. CL:The Irish Times, 27 May 1944.

47. CUThe Irish Times, 26 October 1944. 48. Quoted from Dignan's document in CL:The Irish Times, 28 October 1944.

49. CUThe Irish Times, 28 October 1944. 50. CVJhe Irish Times, 26 October 1944.

367




Acutely aware of its effect on the public imagination, O'Nolan uses the

language of propaganda ?

'jack-booted secret police', 'neo-fascism',

'regimentation' ? to associate the scheme with totalitarianism and the

atmosphere of the fascist state. In doing so, O'Nolan tapped into the

fears that had been aroused not just by the rise of fascism on the Continent

but also by the activities of the Blueshirts in Ireland.51 'Regimentation' is

O'Nolan's favoured term to characterize the relationship between the

proposed 'super-State society' and the Irish citizen. Referring to the

section of the report which deals with 'Voluntary Contributions', a

category of the work-force comprising self-employed members such as

doctors and farmers, O'Nolan reveals that 'if these people do not choose to become "voluntary" members, they will be compelled to! Means may

have to be found within the law to 'compel' such persons to become

members.'52 Sensing the disquiet that such details would have on a public

reading them no doubt for the first time, O'Nolan presses home his point

by quoting an extract from the document which catches the mood of unease in Bishop Dignan's own thinking:

All this implies regimentation, the insurance document says, and

regimentation of any kind is out of harmony with the Irish character. In the complex state of society as we find it to-day in every state, I

fear there is no escape from regimentation.53

O'Nolan was no less concerned about the constitutional problems

resulting from a shift of power to unelected bodies such as the National

Health Insurance Society. Echoing the concerns expressed by MacEntee on a number of occasions, he argued that a massively expanded NHIS

would in effect 'assume the duties of the State':

The "society" which is to assume the duties of the State (and discharge them efficiently, for once) is to embrace practically the entire population of your country Bear that in mind as you read

this further incredible extract: "The Society is not a State service

? that must be made quite

plain to the people from the beginning ... The people must be made aware that the Society is their own."54

51. This fear is clearly described in lohn Swift's 'Report of Commission on Vocational

Organisation (and its times, 1930-40s)', Saothar, i, 1975, pp. 54-62.



54. Ibid., MacEntee's concerns were expressed in a speech in which he complained that

Dignan's scheme 'usurped' the function of the State: 'We shall be careful to ensure

that, whatever be the consequences, the State that will function here will be

constituted by a community of free men and women, whom the State will exist to

serve, and not they to serve the State.' For the most explicit public statement by MacEntee on this issue, see The Irish Times, 14 March 1945.

368




O'Nolan draws the attention of his readers to the implications of this

inflammatory statement. Crucially, Dignan made no attempt to work out how the Society would function alongside existing government bodies, and indeed the government itself. This new 'Society', O'Nolan

speculates, might 'assail the fitness of the government to carry out several of its most material duties'55 and is portrayed as a potential 'rival

government'.56 More worrying still, Bishop Dignan failed to define the

relationship between his Society and the Oireachtas. In contrast to the

British proposals, where the National Health Service was to be under the control of the Minister of Social Insurance, the Irish National Health Insurance Society was conceived as a more or less self-governing body, one which, in not being 'directly answerable to your Oireachtas',57 could

become dangerously remote from parliamentary scrutiny and control.

'The extinction of your Oireachtas', O'Nolan concludes, 'is a big thing to

advocate so lightly.'58 Conflating the economic and political strands of

his discussion, O'Nolan concludes mockingly:

... Am I too serious, too severe? No, reader, it is you who are Irish. It

is you who may be made join, and nurture with your dough, this

priceless super-State "society". Send not to find for whom the bell

tolls: it tolls for thee.59

There can be no doubt that the \^ay in which the proposals were

interpreted by O'Nolan was not how Bishop Dignan had intended. They were the work of an idealistic and public-spirited man struggling to apply Catholic tenets to the complex task of social reform. As Dignan frequently pointed out, his scheme was built on Christian principles and was an

attempt to realize Christian values in a long-overdue welfare scheme,

providing the best medical care for the greatest number of people. The

Rev. J.M. Hayes, founder of Muintir na Tire, declared in his opening

speech to the Catholic Social Week in November 1944, that schemes such as Dignan's represented 'a just Christianity

? a living Christianity'.60 In

describing the Bishop's work as 'kindly intended', and 'well intended'

O'Nolan acknowledges the sincerity of the Bishop's aims.61 That said, he clearly viewed the proposals as being ill-thought out, if not downright naive. Despite the good intentions which lay behind them, the scheme was unworkable, as O'Nolan demonstrates when he pinpoints areas of

real concern that had not been addressed by Dignan. If Dignan failed to

55. CUThe Irish Times, 26 October 1944. 56. CUThe Irish Times, 28 October 1944. 57. CUThe Irish Times, 26 October 1944. 58. CUThe Irish Times, 25 October 1944. 59. CUThe Irish Times, 26 October 1944. 60. The Standard, 20 October 1944. 61. CUThe Irish Times, 26 October 1944.

369




give sufficient thought to how his scheme would be financed, so he also

failed to comprehend the complex realities of Irish political life. In seeking the 'decentralization' of the social services he was, after all, at risk of

creating a parallel bureaucracy, with no real guarantee that it would be an improvement on what had gone before. He also failed to determine

who would decide on matters of policy ? the Government, the

Oireachtas, the Society itself? Which of these would prevail in the event of conflict?

O'Nolan's analysis of the culture of post-war planning is transformed

by his use of literary allusions, most notably to the writings of Jonathan Swift. In many ways, My les na gCopaleen can be viewed as a latter-day Lemuel Gulliver, adrift in a world which is both incomprehensible and

threatening. In contemporary Ireland the planners are the primary agents of confusion and uncertainty. O'Nolan undermines the credibility of

planners continually in Cruiskeen Lawn, not least by associating their work with that of The Royal Irish Academy of the Post-War World

(RIAPWW),62 an organization which he created as the Twentieth Century counterpart of the 'Academy' visited by Gulliver in Lagado. In O'Nolan's

Academy, no less than in Swift's, the plans put forward by the Academicians reflect their failure to find solutions for contemporary problems:

... Why should one bother with bread "problems" and the like when

that vast ganglion of multiple brain-nerves, The Royal Irish Academy of the Post-War World, is grappling mightily with the task of solving all human problems simultaneously

? planning, planning, eternally

planning a new world reborn.63

The absurd proposals of O'Nolan's fictional organization recall the plans and experiments of Swift's Academy and provide an ironic parallel to

the proposals of contemporary Irish planners, ensuring that the latter are met with knowing scepticism, if only through association. Indeed,

recalling Gulliver's misplaced admiration for many of the projects on

display in the Academy only heightens our own appreciation of how

62. Anticipating the activities of this Academy in the new year O'Nolan presents a

catalogue of inventions as ludicrous as anything witnessed by Gulliver: 'The Royal Irish Academy of the Post-War World has plans for 1944. Far-reaching and

unthinkable dispositions have already been made. Employment will be afforded to both the stay-at-homes and the returned emigrants, videlicet, the UA men and the USA men. The Academy will without stint pour Phil T. Lukor into (a) the construction of a vast Cinnamon Theatre; (b) a Cine-Monotony Theatre; (c) an Ignorium; (d) a

Columbarium (for disused Knights); (e) a great new block of Outlaw Courts; (f) an

ultra-modern Disease Centre with hot and cold shivers laid on; (g) same old vast arterial roads radiating throughout the length and breadth of Ireland (despite the fact that vast arterial roads which radiate can only proceed radially and without reference to length or breadth). Finally a Greyhound Painting Academy.' See CUThe Irish Times, 24 December 1943.

63. CUThe Irish Times, 20 December 1943.

370




ludicrous O'Nolan's fictional plans, and their real-life counterparts,

actually are.

In outlining the devastating effects which Bishop Dignan's scheme

might have on Ireland, O'Nolan also alludes to one of Swift's most

vitriolic pieces of polemical writing, 'A Modest Proposal', which iron

ically proposes the farming of Irish children for consumption by the

English. O'Nolan's description of the Bishop's welfare scheme as a

'modest proposal' in his article of 26 October not only evokes the sense

of threat to an Ireland still in its economic and political infancy, just seventeen years after it had 'terminated alien rule',64 but also confirms

England, here in the shape of English welfare reform, as the source of

that threat.65 With 'complete economic collapse'66 a possible consequence of the 'Irish Beveridge Plan', should it be implemented, the Irish now

literally run the risk of being devoured by the English. As provocative and illuminating as these references to Swift's satire

are, they also highlight important differences between O'Nolan's satirical

technique and that of Swift. In pamphlets such as the 'Drapier Letters'

and 'A Modest Proposal', Swift's characteristic technique was the ironic

subversion of a single, coherent narrator. In Cruiskeen Lawn, however, we find that in place of such a narrator O'Nolan employs a wide range of voices. O'Nolan was an accomplished impersonator of voices, a gift

which is as evident in his literary journalism as it is in his novels. Indeed, the origins of Cruiskeen Lawn can be traced to a spectacular demonstration

of his powers of mimicry. For several weeks in 1940, O'Nolan and his

friends succeeded in publishing a series of bogus letters in the correspon dence column of The Irish Times. The sole aim of these letters was to

mock Patrick Kavanagh for his review of the latest novel by Maurice

Walsh and, by adopting a variety of names and guises, to provoke him

into replying. O'Nolan's parodies were so skilful that they were accepted

by the newspaper for publication as genuine letters.67 Having caught the eye of Smyllie, O'Nolan was subsequently invited by him to write a

regular column for The Irish Times, if only to prevent further contributions

under 'inscrutable pseudonyms'.68 Immediately after Cruiskeen Lawn


65. That these should be seen as English policies is reinforced by the titles which O'Nolan

gives to his versions of the National Health Insurance Society: the Royal Irish Institute

of Insurance and Health, LTD; the Royal Hibernian Social Service Bureau; the Royal Irish Insurance Institute, LTD. See CUThe Irish Times, 25, 26 and 28 October 1944.

66. CUThe Irish Times, 27 May 1944. 67. For a selection of these letters, consult John Wyse Jackson (ed.), Myles Before Myles

(London: Grafton Books, 1988), pp. 186-226.

68. Description of O'Nolan made by Smyllie, reported in Tony Gray, Mr Smyllie, Sir

(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1991), p. 168. For an alternative account of the events

leading up to the creation of Cruiskeen Lawn, see Jack White, 'Myles, Flann and Brian', in Timothy O'Keeffe (ed.), Myles: Portraits of Brian O'Nolan (London: Martin Brian

and O'Keeffe, 1973), pp. 62-76.

371




appeared, in October 1940, he once more filled the correspondence column, this time with letters in praise of Cruiskeen Lawn. Many of these

still make good reading; some are particularly illuminating, insofar as

they can be identified as O'NoIan's, for the insight they provide into

how he intended the column to be read.

In his analysis of welfarism, whether in relation to the Beveridge

Report or to Bishop Dignan's scheme, O'Nolan draws upon his skill as

an impersonator. Modulating through a wide variety of voices and tones

he sustains a complex dialogue with his readers, using voices to

harangue, inform, persuade and mock them. The inclusion of these voices

permits him to incorporate a wide range of attitudes and stances, ranging from the voice of a hapless peasant contemplating his prospects ('Faix now! Egob anish, if ivrybody's goin' to be ,.. rich ... ond insured ... ond

have four or five pinshins foreby ...

fwy not meself too?')69 to those of

political theorist, economic advisor, constitutional expert. But the most

compelling of O'NoIan's voices is undoubtedly that of the Minister of

Local Government and Public Health ? Sean MacEntee.

As we have noted, MacEntee shared the Taoiseach's suspicions

concerning the social reforms taking shape within Britain and Northern

Ireland as a result of the Beveridge Report. MacEntee was instrumental

in devising the Irish government's response both to Bishop Dignan's

proposed welfare reforms as well as to the general tenets of Beveridgism.

Acutely aware of the influence of the mass media, MacEntee used every

opportunity and every means available to him to discredit the proposals. An examination of MacEntee's private papers reveals that he spent considerable time scanning British newspapers for information which

could be used to denigrate the Beveridge Report following its publication in 1942. Such information would be sent to de Valera, often with

MacEntee's comments or observations attached. One such document

contained the suggestion that sick persons could be 'compelled' to submit

themselves to such a regime as would be most likely to restore them to

health.70 In condemning what he perceived as the authoritarian nature

of such a scheme, MacEntee drew attention to the powers of the State

which, he conjectured, might even extend as far as forcing 'sterilisation'

upon citizens, a detail which O'Nolan incorporated into one of his finest

satirical visions of the 'new Ireland'.71

69. CUThe Irish Times, 14 May 1944. 70. Sean MacEntee's papers are contained in the State Papers Office, S13053a. 71. CUThe Irish Times, 25 August 1944.

Tost-War Planning': This is a vast thing, hangs like a ball of gold in the sky and

is approached by dual-carriageway arterial roads with built-in cycle tracks,

creches, test-rooms, sanitoriums, news-reel theatres, ceilidhe ballrooms, play dash centres, sterilisers, restaurants, health-centres, clinics and many other

essential amenities.

372




In the guise of Myles na gCopaleen, O'Nolan also presented a running

commentary on the failings of the Beveridge Report, quoting where

necessary from the Irish and English press. As early as February 1943, some three months after the Report was published, the figure of a vigilant censor, sifting through the press, appears in Cruiskeen Lawn, inspired no

doubt by MacEntee: 'My authoritative pronouncement on the Beveridge Plan may be expected any day now but in the meantime I have been

looking through the syntax of other people's articles on the thing'.72 In

the weeks and months that followed, O'Nolan included frequent references to the Beveridge Report in Cruiskeen Lawn, particularly those

that showed it in the worst possible light. Given MacEntee's dominant position within the debate on welfare

reform, it is hardly surprising that his combative presence should be

frequently invoked within Cruiskeen Lawn. The distinctive tone and

language of MacEntee is heard most clearly in Myles's vehement denun

ciations of the Beveridge Report as a 'deliberately continued political fraud in its own country'.73 Towards the end of the War, MacEntee

attacked the principles of 'Beveridgism' with greater frequency and in ever more contemptuous terms. In a speech made to the Fianna Fail

Cumann in March 1945, and reported widely in the press, MacEntee

denounced the Beveridge Plan as the means by which the British labour

force could be brought under increasingly rigid control.74 Beveridgism, he argued, paved the way for the creation of a post-war totalitarian state.

Expressing sentiments which sound remarkably similar to those found in Cruiskeen Lawn, MacEntee concluded that the purpose of the Beveridge

Plan was to create a 'psychology in the harassed people of Britain which would inspire them to endure all the privations that the adverse tide of war had brought upon them, until victory took them to that promised land where want would be unnecessary'. Speeches such as this furnished

O'Nolan with material which he assimilated effortlessly into his column.

Take, for example, his article in which he greets the 'post-war world' in

1945:

Well, well. Brave post-war world?

How do you like it, reader? Do not tell me that you still have to

work, pay taxes, listen patiently to your tiresome spouse? Still get wet in the rain? Have corns? How awful! Post-war planning

... You

see, the whole thing was a

joke. Some people carried the same joke

to dangerous lengths ? I instance Sir Albert Beveridge (sic), the

British statesman, who went so far as to promise his wards immunity

72. CUThe Irish Times, 24 February 1943. 73. CUThe Irish Times, 21 April 1945. 74. Irish Independent, 14 March 1945.

373




from want and worry evermore. I hold ? and held

? that this was

inadvisable and that the more intelligent citizens would realise that all these grandiose proposals

were not intended seriously, could

never be realised ?

that they were evoked by

a mass war psychosis

which insisted on a present that was grim and foul being offset by a

pictured future correspondingly rosy ...75

One of the most pressing questions surrounding Cruiskeen Lawn at this time is why O'Nolan was permitted to continue in his dual role as civil

servant and polemical journalist. Given O'NoIan's position within the

Department of Local Government, at the very heart of the debate on

post-war planning, it is surprising, to say the least, that he did not face censure through his contributions to The Irish Times, particularly over

his discussion of such controversial issues as the scheme proposed by

Bishop Dignan. Certainly there were official rules which were intended to curtail such activities. In his account of O'NoIan's civil service career

Anthony Cronin discusses the regulations which were to 'cause him

trouble later on', but which, interestingly, were not invoked at the time of the Dignan controversy.76

Instead, Cruiskeen Lawn was met with benign tolerance by O'NoIan's

political masters rather than with the strict enforcement of civil service

regulations. In the circumstances, there can be no doubt that O'Nolan

owed his immunity from disciplinary action to political expediency, his comments in Cruiskeen Lawn representing one of the most powerful public statements against the reforms. That O'Nolan was writing in the

press, and, no less importantly, against the press, was of considerable

strategic advantage to a government which, though aware of the

importance of the press in shaping public opinion, could not always claim public relations as one of its strongest points. That O'Nolan was

writing in the newspaper, and against the very editor, who were the

foremost champions of the reforms could only maximize that advantage. But it would be misleading to regard O'Nolan solely as a mouthpiece

for the government. If his attitude to social reform appears close to that of the government then this should be viewed as an example of

synchronicity of thinking rather than political ventriloquism. On the

evidence provided in Cruiskeen Lawn there can be no doubt that O'Nolan was bitterly opposed to many of the proposals for reform. Crucially, the

arguments which he directs against these, including Bishop Dignan's

75. CUThe Irish Times, 14 May 1945. 76. The most detailed account of Brian O'Nolan's career as civil servant is to be found

in Cronin's biography. Cronin's account is given additional weight by virtue of his own

experience of working in the Irish Civil Service. He cites two documents which were designed to prohibit activities such as those engaged in by O'Nolan: 'The Use

of Influence by Civil Servants' and 'Civil Servants and Polities'. Anthony Cronin, No Laughing Matter: The Life and Times of Flann O'Brien, p. 74.

374




scheme, are founded on the same principles that also support his

vilification of other aspects of contemporary Irish thinking. Above all, the tendency to 'imitate' was a facet of the Irish mentality at this time

that O'Nolan diagnosed as potentially debilitating, not just in the sphere of social reform but across a range of issues. In his extensive writings on

the state of the visual arts in Ireland at this time, for example, we find

O'Nolan condemning the reliance of contemporary Irish artists on foreign

painters. Reviewing the 'Loan Exhibition of Modern Continental Art' in

August 1944, he wrote of 'a certain tasteless Catholicism' which 'impelled the selection committee to whip in a lot of very sorry imitative trash,

probably just because the smell was foreign'.77 The campaign against post-war planning is one of the most successful

and balanced achievements in O'Nolan's political satire. It clearly demonstrates that he was more willing than many of his contemporaries to confront and interrogate the problems that faced an Ireland which, 'after a paroxysm of fragmentation without parallel, (was) about to reinte

grate into something new and strange/78 Just what this new world would

look like depended on a number of factors, not least on the quality of

the plans for post-war reconstruction. If O'Nolan was determined to

'liquidate those who want to re-build the old Ireland/79 then he was no

less determined to attack those who advocated change without con

sidering the specific needs of the country. His call for Paddy to 'leave off

from copying for just five minutes' was more than just the familiar

hectoring call of Myles na gCopaleen aimed at the Plain People of Ireland, but rather a full-blown attack on the willingness of his countrymen to

be misled by the allure of 'alien social nostrums'.80

77. CUThe Irish Times, 30 August 1944.

78. CUThe Irish Times, 18 September 1944. 79. CUThe Irish Times, 17 October 1944. 80. CUThe Irish Times, 21 April 1945.

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Documents

Could Paddy Leave off from Copying Just for Five Minutes': Brian O'Nolan and Eire's Beveridge Plan