Word: fianna
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...Valera, near-blind and doggedly indifferent to the country's worsening economic plight, was persuaded by his own Fianna Fail Party to step aside for Lemass and run for the presidency. His successor, after 19 years as Minister of Commerce and Industry, was passionately convinced that Ireland's timorous protectionism could only lead to national extinction. As Fianna Fail's new leader, Lemass was the antithesis of all the old fire-breathing heroes, talked trade and tariffs to the voters in intense, rapid-fire sentences that many found hard to follow. "That Lemass!" snorted one dubious Dublin...
...political style, a member of the generation that freed Ireland and has ruled it ever since. At school, he learned his four Rs-in the Dublin of 50 years ago, revolution was part of the curriculum-and by the age of 14 had joined the Republican Na Fianna Eireann, a sort of Boy Scout underground. Two years later, when the Irish Republican Army occupied the Dublin post office at the start of the botched 1916 Easter Week rising, Sean was the youngest rebel of them all, spent four days on the roof with a rifle, waiting for the British...
Heat with Peat. When Sinn Fein broke apart, young Lemass was the chief architect of De Valera's new Fianna Fail (Heroes of Destiny) Party, which came to power in 1932 and has been in office almost continually ever since. At 32, Lemass was the youngest member of De Valera's Cabinet and earned the affectionate Biblical sobriquet "Benjamin" (after Jacob's youngest son). Though Dev had taught mathematics-and is fervently believed by many fond compatriots to be one of the 13 men on earth who comprehend the theory of relativity-the Taoiseach had neither head...
...whatever in choosing their rulers. For many of those who do, it is campaign time in that periodic democratic phenomenon, the national election. Not all the votes will be so quiet and orderly as Ireland's, which last week returned Prime Minister Sean Lemass and his Fianna Fail Party to power with diminished strength. Nor will all the elections or campaigns be democratic. Yet even amid political repression, even where issues are listlessly debated or dimly understood,. the ballot box serves as the great political symbol of freedom, and its use-or misuse-anywhere in the world is among...
...tying to the presidential election "the Issue"-doing away with proportional representation, which, while giving minorities a voice in the Dail, tends to keep alive old animosities that should have long since become ancient history. "Get rid of the intrigous P.R.!" cried a member of Dev's Fianna Fail (Party of Destiny). "De Valera and Fianna Fail want dictatorship!" retorted the opposition Fine Gael (United Ireland) Party. But it was hardly the sort of issue to stir the hearts of a people who 40 years ago fought the "oppressor" and have never got over...