Word: fianna
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...altar of the sun. By last week Maud Gonne MacBride was 81, bedridden in a rambling old-world mansion outside of Dublin. The De Valera government, for which and against which she had fought so bitterly, had grown complacent and tired. For years Dev's party, the Fianna Fail, had known no effective opposition, but last month Ireland's Joan of Arc was helped from her bed to go to the polls and vote in a national by-election...
...next two days the teachers picketed the Dublin Mansion House, where De Valera's Fianna Fail Party was holding a convention. But Education Minister Thomas Derrig held firm. "The government," he said, "will not be coerced." Prime Minister de Valera threatened to lock out rural teachers who, by giving up a tenth of their salaries, were maintaining the Dublin strikers at nine-tenths of their pre-strike pay level. Stubborn De Valera was so wroth that he was reported pondering a general election on the strike issue...
When the counting ended, the Taoiseach (Gaelic for Prime Minister; pronounced tee shock) and his Fianna Fail had a clear margin of 14 seats in the Dail instead of a deficit of four. Even if all other parties voted solidly against him, De Valera could win on any foreseeable issue. Now he had what he had demanded: power to match his responsibility...
...night before, a bill to merge Eire's transport system had come up for its second reading. The opposition parties (which altogether-but they are seldom all together-have 71 seats to the 67 of De Valera's Fianna Fail) asked postponement until an investigating committee could complete a report on ugly rumors of fat profits in transport stocks. The committee wanted to know how speculators got hold of confidential information, supposedly known only to high Government officials. Brusquely De Valera rejected the suggestion, but on a vote he lost, 64-to-63. Next day an astonished Dail...
...Foully, unfairly, in secret and undemocratically this decision has been taken and hurled at Parliament and the people," roared choleric Dr. Thomas O'Higgins, leader of Fine Gael, the principal opposition. Retorted De Valera, out to get a solid majority for his Fianna Fail: "I have no apology to offer. A minority government has responsibility but not power...