Mansergh, Minister

Potters                                                 Haughey

How to describe him

I really loathe Martin Mansergh. I’m afraid I think he’s the most annoying man in Ireland. The best thing about this blog is going to be doing him. I want to start a competition to find the most appropriate single adjective to describe him – not counting unctuous or snivelling, which are too easy. I’m allergic to all his donnish wheezing. I recoil from the way he places words - a tendency that can come only from a lifetime thinking of yourself as an academic and clever. He places his words but then they solidify as his views. That’s my real problem with him. The views, the views, the views. How could he possibly think he could get away with it - with that demeanour? And yet he does!

Irglish
Mansergh is clearly doing the half-English/ half-Irish act (a la Micheal Mac Liammoir or maybe Erskine Childers). But he is doing it badly and getting away with it. There’s so much over-compensation there you could unite the “British Isles” with it. There’s over-compensation on his part but the real spectacle is the over-compensation on our part – that Fianna Fail have embraced him, that the down-to-earth good people of Tipperary South gave him no less than 6110 first-preference votes in 2007, that even the likes of Vincent Browne defer to him, that Sean Duignan said he found him “rather wonderful”. When describing Mansergh commentators’ vocabulary even changes. We enter the effete linguistic realm of “rather”, “somewhat’ and “the very stuff of”. Chameleon over-compensation!

Implausible

My theory is that Mansergh is “barmy” but since we don’t have the concept in Ireland he is undiagnosed and usually gets away with it. The Sunday Business Post described Mansergh as looking like a middle-aged Harry Potter [see above] and certainly, I would concede, he is a person apart. Often his preposterousness is laid bare and it’s hysterical to watch, though the commentariat are too straight-laced or deferential to notice. Like a few years ago when it became clear after an article that rambled all over a page of the Irish Times that what he was saying was that he wasn’t an English spy, when no-one really thought he was (wouldn’t he be a bit obvious? I think they’d be better off with say Conor Lenihan). Or when he takes a line in favour of one-off housing that he must, as an Englishman, think is outrageous. He once wrote an article in the Irish Times implying that if only the IRA had looked up their history and seen that Mountbatten had been the last governor-general of India, that they would have decided not to blow him up. Apart from probably representing a contorted view of history this shows that Mansergh inexplicably seems to see being a governor general as a sort of trump-card in the murder-avoidance stakes. But the funniest is his over-compensation by fawning over people who even Irish people know are ridiculous – like say Charles Haughey or Bertie Ahern. He has no credibility as there is no-one he will not defend. Uniquely he combines an aristocratic “British” promotion of status with an “Irish” indulgence of cute-hoorism and dodginess.

Haughey’s Puppy
In a history of FF called Taking the Long View, Mansergh derided people who “cribbed at [Haughey's] acquisition of wealth”, who failed to realise that anyone who bought “farmland or indeed any property before the Sixties close to the city were bound to see it markedly appreciate in value, something that could happen just as easily to a middle class Labour politician”. Haughey was the victim of “deep distrust of the success that was achieved largely by his own efforts, as opposed to that achieved with the assistance of comfortable connections”.

Martin Mansergh was twit enough to edit the combined wisdom of Charlie Haughey – his speeches - in a book which he called Spirit of the Nation. In his introduction he wrote “Charles Haughey’s political career and achievements are unmatched among his contemporaries and he is the outstanding parliamentarian in the independent Ireland of the late 20th Century”: Parliamentarianism you see being something our friend would be keen on. He also almost certainly lies awake thinking of somebody with a PhD editing his own speeches and saying he was a consummate/complete or ideally “great” (in the historian’s sense of course) parliamentarian. And he returns to this theme often. He is said to regard election to Parliament as the highest honour. Kevin Rafter says that “he believes that a citizen’s ultimate task is to serve as a representative of the people”. The complete honourable public man.

Can you imagine him with Charlie Haughey, all misquoted Shakespeare, sherry, bad hair and greasy bums - with Haughey occasionally ventilating contempt at his quivering advisor. Surely having put your name to Charlie’s edited speeches you should quietly go off forever and join the Hells Angels or a monastery? But No. Mansergh took it in his stride. He’s upwardly mobile in politics. One to watch. A minister of State!

Bertie’s (high-pitched) Bulldog Last year when Bertie was proposing to pay himself a pay increase greater than the average industrial wage Mansergh went to the pointless bother of issuing a press release noting that 13,000 people get paid MORE than Bertie. But in the last month or so he’s really disgraced himself, hitting the airwaves - apparently heedless to his own reputation - hissing, wailing, gnashing and squealing about how unfair that damn tribunal is on Bertie. In particular performances on Morning Ireland [22nd Feb] and Tonight with Vincent Browne brought the house down. When Senator Eugene Regan criticized Bertie’s approach to tax he suggested that Regan was not entitled to criticise the Taoiseach because he was a senator of less than a year’s standing and shrieked at him, “respect your betters”. The problem for someone who is supposed to be a republican is that you, and I’m sorry to say this because it may I suspect cause Martin emotional trauma, can’t have betters.

His atavistic preoccupation with status is reinforced by comments later in that interview: “I wouldn’t dream, even after six years being a member of the Oireachtas, I wouldn’t dream of making personal attacks on the leaders of FG and Labour in the manner that Senator Regan has been doing for months.” And he confirmed to Marian Finucane some time afterwards that “if the Fine Gael party want to criticise the Taoiseach then that criticism should be done by the leader or a front bench person”.

Mansergo of course went to a minor English public school where they famously inculcate a feisty loyalty to more senior boys. This probably accounts for his unwavering fealties to Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern. (See King’s School Canterbury song line 28: “Hear thy sons, for ever loyal, tho’ the sundering seas divide”)

Republican?
He once described himself as having a “broad anti-imperialist outlook” but amusingly he has a broad imperialist LOOK. Above all he’s a “republican” (Rafter says “a passionate and committed republican but a non-violent one”). I suspect he would describe himself as a conservative republican. I recall he noted a few years ago in his Irish Times column that, “Kevin O’Higgins, who became a dual-monarchist, famously claimed: ‘We were the most conservative revolutionaries ever’. De Valera in many ways fitted the description of a conservative republican in the best sense of the term”. One suspects dual monarchy would appeal to him for the same reason he has so much respect for governor generals.

Republicanism is something he filters through a mean lens. It doesn’t end with classism and defence of the dodgy. He promoted the Iona Institute’s view on gay marriage in a Seanad debate in October 2007 on the Labour Party’s Civil Unions Bill. He infamously noted that introducing it would have a negative effect on tax revenue and that it was not a pressing issue in his constituency – not let us say the sort of rights-based approach you would expect of someone of his Parliamentary, Republican and Academic eminence.

Like his new boss, Cowen, he is also an established anti-secularist.

Biography
I couldn’t bring myself to buy Kevin Rafter’s biography of Mansergh in case it was interpreted by some obscure statistician somewhere as some sort of endorsement so I limit myself for much background to a fine 2002 profile in the Sunday Business Post by redoubtable Pat Leahy.

Martin was born in Woking, Surrey, on New Year’s Eve, 1946. Woking is the town where the Martians landed in H. G. Wells’ science fiction novel The War of the Worlds. It also features in Douglas Adams’s The Meaning of Liff, as the word for when you go to the kitchen but forget why.

Evolution

School and University

He attended King’s School Canterbury where he seems to may have contracted a range of off-the-rail public schoolboy attitudes such as deference to authority and an aching respect for status. He also developed a potential for consuming loyalty for senior Men. It does not appear the regime in King’s School had much to do, however, with his views on the Irish national question or the diversion of monies by public figures.

What happened to him in College that he became this Oxbridge-FF hermaphrodite? He came down from Cambridge in 1974, having “read” Philosophy, Politics and Economics and obtained a Doctorate in French history. What went wrong? I’d welcome the recollections of people who remember him at school (ideally his housemaster) and in Christ Church, Oxford (ideally his tutor) so we can trace the genesis of the perversion. I think we’ll run with Martin for a while so please take your time.

Potter presumably left Cambridge fully-formed, entered the Department of Foreign Affairs by open civil service competition and was promoted to First Secretary in 1977. He worked on European issues, and served 2 years in Germany. He is a former Head of Research with Fianna Fail and Special Adviser to An Taoiseach. He was closely involved in Haughey’s deal with Independent TD Tony Gregory in 1981. Unforgiveably in view of his reputation he opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. He wrote the paper which formed the basis of negotiations leading to the formation of the Fianna Fail-Labour Coalition 1992-94 and was one of the four-person negotiating team that put together and later reviewed the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrats ‘Action Programme for the Millennium’ in 1997. He was responsible for dialogue with Sinn Fein leadership and with Church intermediaries, including those in touch with Unionist and Loyalist leaderships, before the first and second IRA ceasefires. He was a member of the Delegation and Steering Group for the Good Friday Agreement negotiations. In many of these negotiations Bertie was also on his team and he credits Bertie with never making a situation worse – quite a skill for a negotiatior. Can you imagine being a poor PD, Unionist or social partner facing into the early hours and Mansergh and Ahern: Oil and Water. I mean having to listen to AHERN and MANSERGH/Potter in the middle of the night. What if they did good cop/bad cop? Even Trimble didn’t deserve that.

He sought a nomination in Tipperary South as far back as 1982 but failed and first ran for Fianna Fáil as a Dáil candidate in the in the 2002 general election when he failed to be elected with 5,233 first-preference votes, just under 15% of the poll. However, Mansergh was elected to the 22nd Seanad by the Agricultural Panel in July of that year. In the 2007 general election he again ran for Fianna Fáil as a Dáil candidate in the Tipperary South constituency, this time being elected with 6,110 first-preference votes, just over 15% of the poll. He is also a member of the Council of State, having been appointed by President Mary McAleese.

Until 2006 he wrote a weekly column for the Irish Times, giving it up to concentrate on his constituency. He was the winner with Fr. Reid and the Rev Roy Magee of the Tipperary Peace Prize and was awarded a much-sought-after Civic Reception by Tipperary UDC in May 1998. What a pedigree for a windbag. He deserves a knighthood! He is married to Elizabeth Young who according to the Sunday Business Post is reckoned to be a very intelligent woman, has one son and four daughters and lives in a big old house, called Friarsfield, in Tipperary Town.

Tipperary Man
Mansergh seduced his local party. Leahy quotes a “senior FF figure saying he was “particularly impressed by the way he went about his business in getting this nomination - Phone calls, letters, meeting councillors, whatever — he refused to operate like a candidate from Dublin.” Don’t they have meetings, phones, councillors etc in Tipperary? They’re so pleased he’s not behaving like he’s from Dublin ( all public transport, holidays in France and no letters - presumably) they haven’t noticed he’s from ENGLAND.

For those of us mystified as to how he goes down in rural Fianna Fail, the Sunday Business Post gives an insight. Pat Leahy reported that when he had spoken to his local cumann seeking a general election nomination Noel Davern, incumbent TD, junior minister and guardian of the family seat for 30 years rose to respond. “You’re not as innocent as you look,” he told Mansergh with a smile. “And I’m not as stupid as I look”. The normally laconic Leahy implies this is a triumph of Fianna Fail big-tentedness. Perhaps this is the key. Perhaps on the other hand there is some component of modern forelock-tugging. In any event all I could think of is what a cross between Davern and Mansergh would look like. Three parts Healy-Rae to one part Winston Churchill.

Manserghs
According to Leahy since 1700 Tipperary has been lucky enough to have Manserghs in the social mix. Mansergh rhymes incidentally with Panzer – as opposed to Panker.

In 1848, when Young Irishman William Smith O’Brien was found guilty of sedition the pleas for mercy began with the foreman of the Grand Jury, Martin’s great-great-grandfather Richard Martin Southcote Mansergh. The family farm, to which he returns from Dublin almost every weekend, is situated a few miles from Soloheadbeg, where the first shots of the War of Independence were fired in 1919. Mansergh himself spoke at the commemoration of that event in 2000.

The Manserghs were sympathetic to the movement for national freedom. His grandfather travelled to New Zealand, Australia and then to Africa where he worked on the Cape-to-Cairo railway. He was in South Africa during the Boer War, and like many of his class such as Erskine Childers and Major John McBride developed a sympathy for the Boers which translated easily when he returned.

Via a dead pooch and Cambridge to the Republican Party The sympathies of Mansergh’s father, Nicholas, may have been influenced by an event at the family farm during the War of Independence when the Black and Tans shot his pet dog. He developed nationalist sympathies. Nicholas Mansergh went on to become a Cambridge historian, writing a number of well-received books on the Irish Question. Professor Joe Lee described him as “the supreme authority” on the Government of Ireland Act 1920. Mansergh says that his father identified with de Valera because of his “moral and intellectual stature”.

I am sure there was no better man to pinpoint this stature. Martin too will have quietly down the years had moments of identification with Dev for the same reason.

Today upon the due elevation of Martin to the heights of Minister for State with responsibility for the Office of Public Works and the Arts, Fianna Fail shows again it is a broad and strange church; and the proud Mansergh tradition is again aflame in the Premier County.