Twenty-First Century Populism: The Spectre of Western European ...

Populist agency in Ireland
The Republic of Ireland 209
The only historical case of a party in Ireland which comes close to matching
the definition of ‘populist’ used by us in the introduction has been the relatively
small Clann na Talmhan which reached a high of 11 per cent at the
1943 general election and participated in the inter-party governments of
1948 and 1951, before eventually disappearing in the 1960s (Mair, 1987:
24−26). Appealing to the small farming communities of the west and northwest
which had become disillusioned with FF, the party’s programme was,
according to Garvin (2005: 188), ‘anti-political and anti-urban, its leaders’
speeches being peppered with condemnations of politicians, civil servants,
Jews, Freemasons and “money-grabbers” ’. One of the reasons why Clann na
Talmhan has remained an exception of course is the populism already in
mainstream Irish political culture, as outlined earlier. The following section
will therefore examine what populism there has been, and currently is, in
Irish politics through a brief discussion of the politicians’ populism of FF
and its leaders. For reasons of space, FG will not be examined, although
there are many past and present examples of politicians’ populism amongst
its leaders too.
Politicians’ populism
As discussed in the introductory chapter, one of the charges laid at the door
of the term ‘populism’ is that it is often employed in vague and undefined
ways. We can see this in the case of Ireland where FF is often referred to in
passing as being ‘populist’ or having ‘populist’ characteristics, without any
explanation of the term or why it is applicable. For example, Garvin (1974:
307) refers to FF as a ‘nationalist-populist’ party, Gary Murphy (2003: 1)
terms it ‘a classically populist party’, while Laver notes its ‘populist appeal’
(Laver, 2005: 183). Irrespective of whether we agree with these descriptions,
it is striking that, in all three cases, no attempt is made to qualify or expand
on this use of ‘populist’. This is a pity as both Garvin and Laver touch on
important questions by linking populism with FF’s nationalism and its
appeal to the electorate. As discussed above and in the introduction, Irish
political culture has always contained a strong dose of populism and ‘politician’s
populism’ (Canovan, 1981: 12−13) has always been a feature of FF in
particular. Thus, while FF does not fully match the definition of populism
employed in the introduction to this book, its approach to politics does
resonate with the characteristics of ‘politicians’ populism’.
As many scholars have found (see Garvin, 1997), it is hard to locate FF
within a comparative Western European party framework. Indeed, historically,
in some ways it resembles more a party like the Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI) in Mexico which, Canovan (1981: 276) observes, ‘is an allembracing,
non-ideological organization that integrates many different and
potentially conflicting groups and sections of the people’. Like the PRI,