With politicians in Ireland generally feted for their perceived adherence to progressive values and grandiose speeches that garner the affection and appreciation of an avowedly liberal establishment, the death of John Bruton offers a reminder that there used to be a type of politician cut from a different cloth who did not bend his knee to the zeitgeist.
To many, John Bruton was Ireland’s last statesman. Following the death of this former Taoiseach – the title for the Prime Minister of Ireland – at the age of 76 after a long illness, and which arrived unexpectedly for the public, Bruton has been repeatedly described as a someone of decency and integrity. Adjectives not normally associated with descriptions of politicians in Ireland.
Admittedly, his passing will not be marked by the type of national mourning reserved for the flawed genius of Sinead O’Connor or Shane MacGowan, nor by the partisan eulogising reserved for the likes of Noel Browne, the former Minister of Health, who is perceived to have taken on the might of the Catholic Establishment in the 1960s.
Instead, as a Mass-going Catholic and somewhat understated conservative, though one who publicly opposed the prima missio of Ireland’s cultural revolution, the removal of the constitutional ban on abortion, his obituaries will be as he would have wished: understated and truncated, shorn of fanfare and excessive hagiography.
His autobiography – a collection of essays and speeches – is titled ‘Faith in Politics’, recognising and discussing the role of faith in political affairs. His website of speeches, essays and thoughts points to a man who does not fit neatly within any of the simplistic caricatures that dominate discourse today.
Bruton was a committed and practicing Catholic though his Faith never overtly interfered with, or came to the fore explicitly, in his political career. In 1995, as Taoiseach, he initiated the second referendum on divorce in Ireland which passed by the narrowest of margins (the first, ten years earlier, was roundly defeated).
It was only after leaving politics, as Ireland left the Faith behind, that Bruton’s continuing adherence to his religion came to be noted. As Ireland debated whether to remove the constitutional ban on abortion, Bruton remained a calm but determined voice in calling for the proposal to allow abortion in Ireland to be resisted.
Irish President Michael D Higgins, whose political differences with Bruton would be wide, paid tribute to him, saying he was a “deeply committed politician, who demonstrated a life-long interest and engagement in public affairs and public service both in Ireland and internationally”. In 2011, Bruton turned down an invitation to run for the presidency in a campaign that Higgins eventually won.
Bruton never held the public appeal of Ireland’s more charismatic politicians. He didn’t inspire the blind loyalty that many had for Charles Haughey or Bertie Ahern. He was never revered by the intelligentsia as Garret Fitzgerald was. And he may well not have been able to inspire the electorate, had he run, to overcome the appeal of Higgins, an avowed socialist, poet and philosopher president. But many would agree that he had the stature and standing of a man who would have done the office of president proud.
In his later years, Bruton was a regular speaker on international affairs but also on Catholic issues, and he was widely sought among Catholic circles to engage on issues pertaining to the Faith. It is indicative of the type of politician that Bruton was, though, that in none of the epithets and obituaries upon his death is he described as a “Catholic” politician. His faith was very much a private matter.
That isn’t to say that Catholicism did not influence his politics. But his philosophy was very much that of the Faith being articulated through reason and within the melting pot of political debate. To the uninitiated, even his interventions in the abortion referendum are largely forgotten; he is remembered as an Irish statesman and a public figure that crossed divides and democracies: a moderate and a pragmatist and, most of all, a good and decent man of integrity.
Announcing his passing, Bruton’s family described him as a “a good husband, a good father and a true patriot”. The description is almost perfect. Never prone to hyperbolae or dramatics, as a politician, leader, public representative and speaker, Bruton always presented himself as calm, precise and balanced.
His political career started early, at the age of 22, when elected as the youngest member of the Irish Parliament in 1969, and the youngest ever at that point in time. As a member of Fine Gael, he was in a party deeply connected to, what in Ireland is described as, “Civil War politics” – the historical fall-out from Ireland’s War of Independence and subsequent Civil War in the 1920s.
He became Finance Minister when Fine Gael was elected to Government in 1981, encountering failure when his first budget was rejected – ostensibly because it proposed putting VAT on children’s shoes in a time when Ireland’s finances were in a perilous situation and risked intervention by the IMF. The government collapsed on the back of the budget failure.
In 1986, again as Finance Minister, another budget was rejected and the government collapsed again. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde – to lose one budget may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness. This was not the case for Bruton, though, as on both occasions he had the unenviable task of trying to put the country’s torrid finances on an even footing, and suffered the repercussions of necessary austerity in a country that lived beyond its means.
In 1990, at his second attempt, he was elected leader of Fine Gael, in opposition at the time. In 1994 he became Ireland’s Prime Minister – at 47 years of age the youngest ever – leading what was then known as the “Rainbow Coalition”, a government of three parties; something that is now the norm in Irish politics as neither Fine Gael nor Fianna Fail separately can form a majority government, and most recently failing to do so even when combined, thereby having to rely on support from the Green Party.
His term as Taoiseach lasted from 1994 until 1997, when his government collapsed due to questions over whether a member of his party had received illegal payments. There was no question of Bruton having any complicity in the issue, and there has never been a whiff of impropriety around John Bruton during a political career that progressed in an era of “brown envelopes” and shady dealings in Ireland.
His time as Prime Minister was bracketed by the governing of the country by the other Civil War party, Fianna Fail, under the leadership, before and after, respectively, of Charlie Haughey and Bertie Ahern; both were implicated for financial impropriety in later years.
Bruton remained as leader of Fine Gael until 2001, where he was deposed and replaced by Michael Noonan. He was firmly committed to the European project and in 2004 accepted an offer to become European Union Ambassador to the United States, resigning from the Irish parliament after 35 years as an elected representative. He remained in the ambassador post until 2009.
So where does he sit in the pantheon of Irish politicians and leaders? For he has never been described as a “great” anything. He will be most favourably remembered, along with Bertie Ahern and Albert Reynolds of Fianna Fail, for the role he played in bringing the Northern Ireland peace process to a conclusion under the Good Friday Agreement, playing a steadying role in the negotiations when others were at risk of losing their heads.
Now that he has met his eternal reward, and while considering all the above, it may be time to finally reflect on Bruton as a great statesman and also acknowledge that, especially given the evidence and political problems of today, such statesmanship warrants as more than enough.
Photo: Irish Prime Minister John Bruton (centre) speaks to reporters as Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Dick Spring (left) watches on outside the White House, Washington, DC, 17 December 1996. Bruton and Spring participated in bi-lateral talks with US President Bill Clinton. (Photo credit: JOYCE NALTCHAYAN/AFP via Getty Images.)
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