While mooching around my local library yesterday I came across a book, Just Garret, written by Garret Fitzgerald.
The book was published in 2010 and is an account of Fitzgerald’s life from early childhood right up to his retirement from politics and beyond to 2010.
I would have no interest in reading the entire book but I do have a habit of checking the Contents and Index of books by or about Irish politicians for the word ‘corruption’.
No mention of the ‘c’ word in the Contents and, amazingly, no mention in the Index.
So here we have an account of political events from one of the most prominent politicians in recent Irish history spanning a decades long career that almost exactly mirrors the career of the most corrupt politician in Irish history, the criminal Haughey, and the word ‘corruption’ is not once mentioned.
It’s like writing a history of World War Two without mentioning D Day or writing a history of Ireland with no reference to the year 1916.
It’s denial and revisionism on a grand scale.
It is an absolute impossibility for anyone to write a credible account of recent Irish political history without an extensive chapter on political corruption.
To write a book of 430 pages spanning the most corrupt years in Irish political history without even once mentioning the word ‘corruption’ is a farcical exercise of the most hilarious kind.
Fitzgerald’s delusional tome is subtitled:
Tales from the political front line.
Clearly, Fitzgerald spent his entire career deep within an Alice in Wonderland bunker well behind the front line of corruption.
No doubt you have seen, perhaps read, Elaine Byrne’s book, Political Corruption in Ireland 1922 – 2010; a bit tedious but very informative.
http://tinyurl.com/chgxmn7
Thanks for that Haymoon, Have not read it yet, much too expensive but I have it on order from my library.
Yeh, I suppose its quite amazing that Garrett Fitzgerald talked about this “floored” pedigree when describing Charlie. But he was probably too much of a gentleman to write about it. Either that, or he was aware that corruption was endemic in Irish political circles but just did’nt want to dwell on it.
Almost certainly the latter Derrick.
Corruption is a word that would be alien to Fitzgerald—he did use the term flawed pedigree which was deliberately mis-interpreted but yes–this tome from Garrett that makes no reference to the rampant corruption that existed in those yearsis more than somewhat incomplete.