That is the gentleman responsible for saying that this system, which he commended in such delightfully pleasant terms then, has now every conceivable defect and none of the virtues which he claimed for it in 1937. I think it was Emerson who said that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. On that basis two expansive minds have given of their talents here this evening telling us all the vices which P.R. now has although they commended that system of election to the people some years ago.
I can understand anything but I cannot understand on what grounds this Government claim that abolition of P.R. will give stability in government. Fianna Fáil have been in office under P.R. for 20 years out of the last 26 and for a large portion of that time they had undisputed and despotic power. They were capable of doing anything they wanted to do, capable of implementing all their election promises. Many of their election promises were forgotten. In fact, the power they had was so great that in many cases, as in the case of the food subsidies, they tore up their election promises once they had got their majority. Many of the promises they made at the last general election have been forgotten now so great is the power and strength they have under P.R.
Why then is it necessary to ask the people to change the system of election while, in fact, the present system has produced not only stability but has given the Government all the power and authority they need to implement their promises, maintain order and direct the community on any lines which are calculated to be for the community's well-being? There has been less changing of Government here in the past 36 years than in any other country in Western Europe. How then can it be claimed that the abolition of P.R. is necessary in order to get stability here when in fact we have a record in that respect without parallel in Western Europe?
In the course of his speech the Taoiseach said that one of the reasons for confirming P.R. in the Constitution of 1937 was—to use his own words—"the system we have, we know. The people know it. On the whole it has worked out pretty well." Here is a system which the people know, which has worked out pretty well and yet although faced with economic, fiscal and agricultural problems the Taoiseach now says in the midst of all these grave economic worries, "Let us change the system of election"— change the system which the people know, the system which the people understand and the system which, as the Taoiseach has said, gives good results.
If the people had only a recent experience of the P.R. system, one could understand the desire to introduce some other method of election. But what are the facts? Every person in the country under 57 years of age who has voted in an election has voted under no other method except P.R. As the Taoiseach says, and rightly says, they know the system. The Tánaiste says they do not understand it, despite 57 years' experience of it. A nice tribute to the intelligence of the Irish people! Imagine how many industrialists would be delighted to employ people who, after 57 years of a simple method of election, do not understand it yet, according to the Tánaiste. Every person in the country under 57 years of age has known no other system of election but P.R. Yet, with all that familiarity with the method of election, with all the knowledge that in 20 of the 36 years it has given the country one type of Government—Fianna Fáil—and has produced a more stabilised type of Government than the Government of any other country in Western Europe, we are now invited by the Taoiseach to repeal this method of election, even though, as he himself says, it is known by our people and is understood by our people.
A general election usually provides a good opportunity for discussing matters which may form the central motif of the election or have an auxiliary place in a particular Party's programme. At the last general election, the abolition of P.R. was not an issue. I never heard a single member of the Fianna Fáil back benches saying he wanted P.R. abolished at the last election. I have never in my long membership of this House seen a question from a Fianna Fáil Deputy asking the Government when they intended to abolish P.R. Fianna Fáil Deputies put down questions on every conceivable subject, touching every facet of life in Ireland, but they never once asked a question about the abolition of P.R. I never heard them urge its abolition here. I never heard it urged when we were discussing here the 1937 Constitution. I never say anything in the papers about it at the last election.
We had, of course, the occasional rumble from the Taoiseach. He gets annoyed, naturally enough, when the result of an election does not suit him. I can understand that quite well. I know the Fianna Fáil Party think they have a proprietary right to government and the Taoiseach believes he is predestined to be the Taoiseach of this country for the remainder of his mortal life. He does not like anything to happen which challenges in any way his right to function in that capacity. That is quite understandable. We all have our little peculiarities; we all have our little ego-eccentricities. That is one of the Taoiseach's; he does not like anybody to take power from him and, if someone does, he is wrong and his supporters are intellectually inferior, half-witted and dull. We all remember the occasion when the Taoiseach said that the people had no right to do wrong. Judgment as to what constituted wrong-doing resided solely in the Taoiseach. It might be right from the point of view of the people, but, if the Taoiseach thought it was wrong— that includes putting him off the Front Bench over there—then it was not only politically wrong but morally wrong as well in the eyes of the Taoiseach. One understands these peculiarities. They spring in the main from lust for power and a determination to hold on to power and to the control of the executive machine.
What this House has to decide on this Bill, and what the people will have to decide later, is what method of election we will have in future. We can have two methods. We can have P.R. and, within P.R., a number of subsidiary methods of election under the principles of P.R., or we can have a single direct vote—the vote used by the Stormont Government and the vote used by the British Government. We can, as I say, have the method of voting with which our people have become familiar over the past 36 years —the method of P.R. so eloquently commended by both the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste in former years.
Let us consider for a moment what is likely to happen and what can happen. Let us consider what has happened, in fact, in other places where the direct system of voting has been in operation. Consider the position of this country, for instance, under the direct system of voting. One could have in a single constituency, say in the City of Dublin, three candidates representing Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Labour Party. This could be the result of an election under the direct voting system. The Fianna Fáil candidate could poll 35 per cent. of the votes cast; the Fine Gael candidate could poll 34 per cent. of the votes cast; and the Labour candidate could poll 31 per cent. of the votes cast. The result will be that the man who polls 35 per cent. of the votes— roughly one out of three—will be elected and the other two candidates, who polled 65 per cent. of the votes cast, will be defeated.
In other words the constituents in that constituency will get as a representative someone who does not represent them because 65 per cent. of the people did not vote for him and, by not voting for him, indicated that they did not want him. But if he polls 35 per cent. of the votes and the other two candidates have between them 65 per cent., the man with the 35 per cent. is entitled to take his seat here. That situation can be repeated in constituency after constituency and one will then have on the Government Benches a Party which, on an average, polled only one-third of the votes in an election, while their opponents, who polled two-third of the votes, will not have a seat here at all.
If you have a constituency in which four Parties are contesting the election, you could have a situation in which the Fianna Fáil candidate may poll 30 per cent. of the votes, a Fine Gael candidate 25 per cent., a Labour candidate 23 per cent. and a Clann na Talmhan candidate 22 per cent. In that case, the man with the 30 per cent. wins, even though, in fact, the electorate to the extent of 70 per cent. voted against the person who is awarded the seat. This is the method recommended to us as a democratic method of election. Can anybody blame anybody for being suspicious of a nigger in the woodpile somewhere? This is being suggested because the Fianna Fáil Party hope that for a substantial period of time at least, they will be the largest Party and, being the largest Party as a result of an election on the direct voting system, can hold on to Government in a way in which they could not hold on if P.R. were in operation.
You can have a situation in which two Parties contest an election on the direct method of voting—a Government Party and an Opposition Party. If the Government Party poll 51 per cent. of the votes in each constituency, they get every single seat in the country and the Party which polls 49 per cent. in each constituency will have no seat in Parliament at all. That is what is recommended to us now as a democratic method of election. Has the P.R. system ever caused anything to justify us now swapping it for such an undemocratic method as that?
You may say these things do not happen. Take some examples. Take the example of the Liberal Party in Britain. In the 1950 election, when they polled 2,600,000 votes, they got only nine seats in a Parliament of 625 members. Take the position in South Africa to-day. The Government Party in South Africa polled 598,000 votes and got 92 seats. The Opposition polled 608,000 votes and got only 43 seats. There you have an example where, because of the single method of election and manipulating of constituencies, a minority Government gets twice as many seats as the Opposition get. Or, you can take the further example of Great Britain. In 1924, when the Conservatives obtained less than half the votes, they secured a majority of 200 seats in the British Parliament.
Therefore, it is not correct to say that these things are not likely to happen. They have happened and they are happening under the undemocratic method which the Government is now endeavouring to foist on the people.
Great Britain has been quoted as an example of good Government. Our belated admiration for Britain is rather refreshing. Of course, everybody knows that the present method of election in Britain is maintained purely on the basis of political expediency. It is quite frankly the aim of the Tory Party in Britain and quite frankly the aim of the Labour Party in Britain to get rid of the Liberals. If P.R. is introduced in Britain, there will be a substantial Liberal Party in the House of Commons because they have sufficient votes in their constituencies to give them substantial representation in the Commons under P.R., but neither the Labour Party nor the Tory Party want the Liberals in the House of Commons and, consequently, they manage to maintain the present direct system of voting so as to keep the Liberals out, because the reappearance of the Liberals under P.R. would be, in their view, something highly undesirable and something they would be anxious to avoid. That is the justification, in their view, for the maintenance of the single vote in Great Britain.
Notwithstanding the fact that the single vote continues to operate in Great Britain, there are many responsible advocates in the Labour Party and in the Tory Party of P.R. These advocates believe that P.R. is a better method of election. The Proportional Representation Society in Great Britain is maintained very largely by the moral and financial support of members of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party who recognise that P.R. is a fair and equitable method of election. In fact, while the Fianna Fáil Government now commend to us, and suggest our emulation of the British method of election, it is not to be assumed that his method of election is regarded even by the British as the last thing in democracy or in efficiency. When he saw the 1950 results, Mr. Churchill made this observation:—
"I have no doubt at all that P.R. is invariably the fairest, the most scientific and, on the whole, the best in the public interest."
In March, 1950, he said, referring to the injustices which result from the continued use of the single non-transferable vote:—
"Nor can we, to whatever Party we belong, overlook the constitutional injustice done to 2,600,000 voters who, voting upon a strong tradition, have been able to return only nine members to Parliament."
He is referring to the fact that 2.6 million votes secured only nine seats in Parliament for the Liberal Party.
So far as Britain is concerned, the present method of voting has not the admiration of all the people that one would imagine worship at the shrine of the direct system of voting in Britain, if one were to believe what the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste say.
Britain has been quoted to us by the Government speakers as an example of the stability which exists under the direct method of voting. What are the facts? In the 24 years from 1918 to 1942, Britain had a minority Government for three years, a one-Party Government for six years and a Coalition Government for 15 years out of the 24, although they have the single non-transferable vote that is recommended as the panacea for all our ills here. In those 24 years, that is the record of Britain so far as the composition of her Governments is concerned.
France has been talked about by the Tánaiste. He has been in Paris a sufficient number of times in the past 12 months to have been able to ask any Frenchman by what method the French people vote. The old canard about France is still to be pressed into service in the course of this campaign. France has had two types of direct voting in the last 70 years of the Third Republic, two separate methods of direct voting. France had P.R. for only one year. The Tánaiste did not know that this evening. He was asked what year it was. It was suggested that it was for only a year. He did not know the year. Apparently he is still under the illusion that France has a system of P.R. France has a second ballot but not a system of P.R., as we know it or as any other country in Western Europe using P.R. knows it. But, although France has had the direct method of voting for a period of 70 years in the Third Republic, France has had 90 separate French Governments, where as in Britain, during the same period, with the direct system of voting, there have been only 20 changes of Government.
Anybody who knows France or takes the trouble to inquire about the position there knows that it is not the method of voting that is responsible for the political situation there. Many of the problems which arise in France are endemic to the country. Probably one of the biggest influences in the changing of Governments in France is the fact that the Communist Party is frequently the largest Party in Parliament and, because of its unwillingness to work with other Parties, brings about a situation which produces that kind of yeastiness which is a special monopoly of France.
However, French affairs are matters for the French people. On the whole, they seem to have done much better economically than we have. Their standard of life is better than our standard of life and their standard of social services is better than our standard. So, whatever jokes we may be inclined to pass about French Governments and the ease with which they change, we should remember that the whole economy of France is such that ours makes a miserable showing against it.
There is another gag about P.R. and where it came from. We are told that P.R. was a British product and was first produced by the British in 1918 and foisted on the people of Sligo and subsequently on the nation. Does everybody not know that that is a blatant untruth? The British Parliament never cared what way the people of Sligo voted. The people of Sligo wanted P.R. and the British simply passed a resolution to facilitate it. The British Parliament could not have cared less what way the people of Sligo voted.
To suggest now that after the fashion of the Skibbereen Eagle, the whole British Cabinet were watching Sligo and had hatched out a plan whereby P.R. would be foisted on Sligo, is really valuing human credulity at too low a level. It is absurd and stupid to tell us that the British planted P.R. on Sligo. The fact of the matter is that P.R. around that period was gaining an appearance not merely here but in Britain. Deputy J.A. Costello has quoted Arthur Griffith's speech in support of it in 1910. P.R. did not arrive here until 1918, so that, even if Lloyd George had not heard of Arthur Griffith's speech, no one would have claimed that Lloyd George put him up to making the speech to harm the Irish people.
P.R. is not a British product. People who say it is ought to read more, or get some instruction from someone who has read more. P.R. is by no means a British product. Even in their Dominions where it operates, it is operated as one of the last methods of election in those countries. Other countries in Europe have been operating P.R. in the last century. To suggest, therefore, that P.R. is a British product is all right for half-wits and nitwits, but one should not imagine that intelligent people would swallow that kind of drivel as justification for the abolition of P.R. here.
The Minister for External Affairs recently told us learnedly that P.R. is a British product. Therefore, he apparently regarded it as a soiled thing, as something unclean, while at the same time he is asking the Dáil and the people to swallow, holus-bolus, the British method of election, the direct method of election. I suppose the Minister for External Affairs must know that if this Bill goes through and if the referendum is passed, we will be able to put out our chests and say to the British: "We have the same system of election as you; you are not the only one with this system; we have got it also." The Minister for External Affairs could then go to Belfast and say to the Belfast people: "You have not got a monopoly of this system of election; we have adopted it also." He could say also sotto voce:“We have adopted it for the same reasons as you adopted it, namely, to get rid of the minorities who are troubling us.”
The Minister for Industry and Commerce said this evening, apparently taking complete leave of the Ten Commandments, that there was greater stability in countries which had the direct method of voting. Where does the Minister go when he has any free time? Does he read anything about what happens elsewhere? What are the facts of the matter? The most stable Governments in Europe, and those with the highest standard of living, conduct their parliamentary elections on the basis of P.R. It operates in Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, Switzerland, Holland and Norway—all countries somewhat comparable in size with ours. Those countries have been able to give their people a very high standard of living. That is common to them all. It is outstandingly so in respect of Sweden and Switzerland. Therefore, P.R. has not prevented those people from enjoying stability. Nobody here can recall any turbulent scenes in any of those countries arising out of any challenge to the authority of the Government or the method of election.
Those countries have been able to give their people a high standard of living. In fact, every time we are in the company of those countries at O.E.E.C. meetings in Paris now, we have to plead with them to treat us decently, that we are still a small, undeveloped country. We are now bracketed in Europe with Turkey, Greece and Iceland from the economic standpoint. That is the status we enjoy in comparison with European countries; yet we have the brazen audacity to say here that there is no stability in those countries and that they can never have stability under P.R. Those countries are a living demonstration of the fact that P.R. has carried them well on the highway to an incomparably better standard of living than our people enjoy here.
There are only three countries in Western Europe where the British system of election operates. One is France, another is Spain and another is Portugal. Two dictatorships and France operate the British system on the Continent of Western Europe. All the others operate P.R. Now, the highest ambition of the Fianna Fáil Government is to pattern its method of election on Spain and on Portugal.
When one listens to this nonsense that P.R. was a British-foisted arrangement imposed upon us, we struggling to avoid its imposition, one is brought back quite quickly to the unassailable fact that P.R. was put into the Constitution of 1922 and that it remained in that Constitution until 1937. When the question of determining the method of election came up for consideration in 1937, the present Taoiseach not only confirmed P.R. in the Constitution of 1937 but commended that method of election as the fairest in all the circumstances. He said it was one that the people knew, one they were familiar with, one that gave them pretty good results. Therefore, P.R. has been in the main accepted by all our people from 1922, with an occasional demur by the present Taoiseach whenever his Government is defeated; and that is, as I have explained before, an understandable annoyance when people think they have a proprietary right to govern. We could have got rid of P.R. in 1922 or in 1937. Instead of that, we put P.R. in the Constitution on both occasions and we have kept it there since. It has the approbation not merely of the Government Party of 1937 but of all Parties in this State.
There is only one reason for changing it and that is the same reason in the Twenty-Six Counties as the reason given in the Six Counties. When the Stormont Government abolished P.R., the Government here protested— Fianna Fáil protested—and they said: "This is to smash minorities there; this is to deprive people of their electoral rights; this is to weaken and retard the anti-partition groups in the Six Counties; this is typical of the Orange dictatorship complex which operates in the Six Counties." Fianna Fáil then said it was unfair and unjust to have done that. Now they are doing it themselves, justifying what Stormont did; and the only conclusion one can come to in this matter is that, when it comes to manipulating the method of election, Stormont leads and the Fianna Fáil Party follow. That is what has happened. Now the Stormont Government, the British Government and the Fianna Fáil Government can all stand together saying how united they are since they have got the same pattern of electoral life.
Lest it might be thought that these were just ex-parte views not shared by anybody else, I have here a quotation, and I think it might do the Taoiseach some good if I read it. It was an article written by Dr. Alfred O'Rahilly, now Fr. O'Rahilly. The Taoiseach will hardly say I am quoting from a prejudiced source. In 1948 when the Taoiseach was neighing and scratching the ground with impatience to abolish P.R., Dr. O'Rahilly wrote an article in The Standard newspaper in January, 1948. Some of this is interesting because Fr. O'Rahilly is, of course, a noted sociologist and in this context could be regarded as an unprejudiced and expert contributor to views on this subject. He opened the article by saying:—
"Mr. de Valera takes credit for framing the present Constitution, which imposes P.R. in Article 16. He seems to have changed his mind, for a few days ago, he made the following pronouncement in County Clare."
Dr. O'Rahilly quotes Mr. de Valera in County Clare, where the Taoiseach gave utterance to this view:—
"People in England had been wise in not accepting P.R., for the reason that it made for weak Government, the type of Government that brought democracy into discredit and that ultimately led to the second European war."
The quotations end there and Dr. O'Rahilly goes on to say:—
"Last month in County Meath he spoke of multi-Party Governments and declared that ‘their ineptitude and mafficking manoeuvres brought democracy into discredit, leading directly to dictatorship and then to the war.' Unfortunately, as one who has been teaching sociology for years, I find his sweeping statements unconvincing. In fact, they must be pronounced highly paradoxical. For every country which has rejected democracy has established one-Party Government; one big Party has suppressed all rivals, denouncing them as ‘splinter Parties.' Yet we are asked to believe that the danger here lies elsewhere, namely, in the possibility that one Party will not be sufficiently strong to dominate all its competitors ! It seems to me that Mr. de Valera's fallacious generalisation is due to his having made some erroneous assumptions.
"In the first place, he assumes that the other Parties and individuals contesting seats have no principles or objects in common with the pledge-bound members of Fianna Fáil. Now it is quite true that the difficulties of a country such as France are primarily due to the existence of a foreign-sponsored ideological Party which is using the democratic machine in order to wreck democracy. A Communist Party, whether emerging through P.R. or not, could not genuinely cooperate with other Parties. Does Mr. de Valera insinuate, as others have explicitly declared, that some of his rivals are tainted with Communism?..."
He goes on:—
"It is surely high time that the leaders of all Parties should insist on a greater measure of self-restraint. Arguments can be strong without being personal; points of view can be placed before the electorate without vilifying one's opponents. We, Irish Catholics of different Parties, should remember that what we have in common is far more precious and important than that wherein we differ. It is, therefore, to be hoped that the orgy of vindictive abuse which has disgraced recent elections, and even parliamentary proceedings will be eschewed in this election. There is an enemy watching us, ready to exploit our differences."
I missed some because it is not appropriate, but he goes on to say:—
"In the next place Mr. de Valera is misled by a bias in favour of a British system, of which he appears to be unconscious. He denounces ‘representatives of different Parties' in the Government. That is, he takes for granted that the Executive is to comprise only representatives of one single political Party. But there is no such provision even in his own Constitution, wherein political Parties are not so much as mentioned. In my own (rejected) draft Constitution of 1922, I had this provision...."
He sets out what the provision is. That is where the Government should be a certain number of members elected by the Taoiseach and others elected by the Dáil on the basis of P.R. He then goes on to say:—
"In other words, I explicitly adopted the Swiss system and rejected the British; whereas Mr. de Valera made his Constitution to fit the British Party system. And when he now argues that monopolistic Party government is the only one that will not ‘bring about disastrous conditions' or bring ‘democracy into discredit', etc., it is because no alternative to the British political procedure appears ever to have entered his head. So naturally, when speaking in County Clare he was full of praise for ‘people in England'. But he should not assume that the rest of us have the same pro-British prejudices in this matter. Accordingly, when expatiating on the defects of a multi-Party Executive, he failed entirely to advert to the similar and even worse defects of the doctrine of collective ministerial responsibility and of the practice of pledge-bound whip-driven voting. The public does not realise the amount of concessions and compromises involved. I have known cases where a Minister strongly disagreed with a colleague but was prevented from opening his mouth; sometimes the majority of the Party is browbeaten into submission by the leaders. There are several cases on record of a T.D. speaking on one side and then voting on the other at the behest of Party discipline. A Party, no matter how big, is a machine at the disposal of a small clique. No wonder that it is difficult to find independent educated men to submit to the degrading inhibitions of this Party system which we have imported from England. It seems to me simply ludicrous to hold up this caucus machinery, with its faked unanimity, as the sole possible ideal of democratic government."
There are the views of Dr. O'Rahilly. The Taoiseach will have to admit that, from my point of view, he is a pretty impartial observer. I know he has said things here which the Taoiseach does not like.
