How the basics of politics never change
Set in rural Ireland in
the early 1950s, the story might not, at first, appear relevant to
twenty-first-century Realpolitik powered by Twitter, tipping points, robocalls,
and the viral Internet. Yet it covers all the bases in the true story of a
local campaign that eventually toppled a national government.
A mountain village in
County Wiklow, Baltinglass remains bucolic and quiet as a community where
people tend to mind their own business--until 1950. The appointment of a new
sub-postmaster that year shakes things up and launches the story told by the
seventh winner of the Leacock Medal.
The government grants
the post office position to Mick Farrell, a young local with political
connections but no post office experience. Villagers might have turned a blind
eye to Mick’s failings had they not seen his appointment as an injustice to two
innocent others: Helen Cooke and her elderly Aunt Katie. The job had been in
the Cooke family for eighty years. Katie had held it officially, but Helen had
done the work on her behalf. The people of Baltinglass see Helen, a “tiny,
shy-seeming” and unmarried woman of fifty-five, as dependent and vulnerable and
as someone who has done the job to perfection.
Sympathy for Helen
induces a movement to get her reinstated. The crusade runs well over a year
before culminating in Mick’s resignation and Helen’s return to the post office.
Meanwhile, a broader debate over political favoritism takes hold around the
Baltinglass hubbub. It ultimately forces out the responsible politician (the
Labour Party Minister of Posts and Telegraphs, James Everett) and then the
whole government (the Inter-Party Coalition).
The author Larry Earl,[1]
a New Brunswick-born photographer and reporter, was working in Britain at the
time. Baltinglass appealed to his sense of humour as well as his journalist
side. Against the Tolstoy standard for dispassionate narrators, Earl’s style
sounds a little shaky and over the top at times, but his words always seem
aimed at reporting the facts of the story. He had lots of material to draw on.
Newspapers filled their pages with the battle of Baltinglass and its aftermath;
the controversy generated letters to the editor, fiery hearings, debates in
Parliament, and even a popular song about the battle. Earl not only
choreographs all these facts into a story, but also provides a snapshot of the
Irish politics of Catholics and Protestants, the village poor and city rich,
and the Republicans and those who would deign to associate with the British
Royal family. The combination makes for a lively read, and like an earlier book
written by Larry Earl, it would, in the right hands, make for a good movie.[2]
But for a one-time
political hack like me, the book serves as something else. It acts like a happy
souvenir of the politics of Legion halls, door-knocking, letters, and draught
beer. It records, as a readable reference, all the elements of an election
campaign: (1) a core team as well as committees for collective decisions; (2)
rapid-response media relations; (3) a demand for justice; (4) titillating
David-and-Goliath narratives; and (5) a determination to focus, focus, focus.
All will sound familiar to anyone at a party headquarters or in a well-run
local campaign. The book embraces principles that seem as valid now as they
were in that Irish mountain town.
Today political events
move so fast, they’re hard to understand. But Baltinglass provides me with a
reference and a way to study the chain reaction in slow motion when real people
interacted in what was once real time.
Writing Exercise
Write a short story that tells how a pothole brought down the
government of New Brunswick.
[1] Lawrence Earl was born Lawrence Wiezel in Saint John, New
Brunswick. He died in 2005 at the age of ninety. He covered the invasion of
Normandy first hand. His photos were used on the cover of Time magazine
and in National Geographic, Maclean’s, and the Saturday
Evening Post. In 1943, he married Jane Armstrong, one of only two female
foreign correspondents during WWII. New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia,
s.v. “Lawrence Earl” (by Matt Belyea), http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/e/earl_lawrence.html
(accessed October 15, 2013).
[2] Earl’s book Yangtse Incident (1950) tells
another true story, that of HMS Amethyst
and its attack and escape during the revolution in China in 1949. The movie
based on it was a British box office success in 1957 and starred Richard Todd
and Donald Houston. Earl wrote five other books: Crocodile Fever (1954),
The Frozen Jungle (1955), She Loved a Wicked City (1962), The
Riddle of a Haunted River (1962), and Risk (1969). New Brunswick Literary Encyclopedia,
s.v. “Lawrence Earl,” http://w3.stu.ca/stu/sites/nble/e/earl_lawrence.html
(accessed Oct. 15, 2013).