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4

‘Struck him violently in the mouth’

The Kerry TD Who Punched a Colleague in the Dáil Dining Room

Seán Lemass rose to his feet in Dáil Éireann to present TDs with details of the Order of Business. It was 31 January 1952. The then Tánaiste outlined the various pieces of legislation to be debated that day, as well as a proposal that the House would not sit the following week. A number of deputies rose to oppose the Order of Business, among them the Fine Gael leader, General Richard Mulcahy, and the leader of Clann na Poblachta, Seán MacBride. Several others asked about various bills which were before the House. The Independent TD for Dublin South East, Dr Noël Browne – who less than a year earlier had resigned as Minister for Health over the controversial Mother and Child Scheme – was called to speak by the Leas Ceann Comhairle, Cormac Breslin: ‘Dr. Browne: I do not want to spend an unduly long time on the list mentioned by Deputy [Liam] Cosgrave but I should like to draw attention to the reference to an Adoption of Children Bill.’1

Liam Cosgrave TD, who had already spoken, interjected to say that he had not made any reference to the Adoption of Children Bill. Across the chamber from Cosgrave, on the Independent benches, the conservative firebrand TD for Laois–Offaly, Oliver J. Flanagan – then an Independent, but later a Fine Gael deputy – made an obscure comment suggesting that another member of the House would be in a better position than Dr Browne to comment on the adoption legislation: ‘Mr. O. Flanagan: Deputy Flynn would be more qualified to do that.’

Deputy Flanagan was referring to the Independent TD for Kerry South, John (Jack) Flynn, who was not in the chamber at the time. The Dáil transcripts do not record any reaction from other TDs to Flanagan’s off-the-cuff remark and they continued with the Order of Business. Within a few short hours, however, Flynn was to give his response to Flanagan – in a most unparliamentary manner.

As Flanagan dined in the busy Dáil restaurant later that evening, he was approached by Flynn and challenged about his remarks earlier that day in the chamber. The Fine Gael parliamentary leader, John A. Costello, later told the Dáil in vivid detail about what followed:

Mr. J.A. Costello: It is my duty to interrupt the business for the purpose of drawing the attention of the House and particularly your attention, a Cheann Comhairle, to a gross breach of the privileges of this House and of a particular Deputy and possibly of other Deputies of the House which occurred in the precincts to-night. The incident is one which is of very grave and particular importance and is even more serious from the point of view of the order and dignity of Parliament. Tonight, after the discussion which took place on the motion to adjourn this House on the conclusion of its proceedings to-day until next Wednesday week … Deputy O. Flanagan was in the restaurant talking to another Deputy, Deputy Dillon, when … Deputy Flynn, came behind him, caught hold of him, turned him round, used a very offensive and obnoxious expression and struck him violently in the mouth, alleging that he had during the debate spoken about him, Deputy Flynn. He also assaulted an usher, one of the servants of the House, and was guilty of extremely offensive conduct. He also made offensive references to another Deputy, Deputy Collins … As leader of the Opposition it then became my duty to inform you, so that you, a Cheann Comhairle, would take the necessary action and direct the proper steps to be taken.

The Ceann Comhairle, Patrick Hogan, insisted that the matter would be fully investigated, suggesting it would be best dealt with by the Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges. Another deputy, Major Vivion de Valera, asked that the Ceann Comhairle take into the account ‘the provocative personal remarks’ made by Deputy Flanagan about Deputy Flynn, which had been ‘deleted from the record’ of the House. The exchanges continued:

Mr. Seán MacBride (CnaP): Is the Deputy [De Valera] trying to justify an assault on a member of this House?

Mr. Patrick Burke (FF): There is only one answer to a common perjurer [Flanagan] who abuses everybody here day after day.

Major de Valera (FF): Will the Ceann Comhairle take these remarks into account is all I ask? They were remarks which were expunged from the records.

Mr. Burke: He [Flanagan] does nothing but blackguard everybody here.

Fianna Fáil’s Robert Briscoe suggested that John A. Costello’s account was ‘not in accordance with the facts’, saying that he was present in the dining room when the incident occurred and that Costello was not. Jack Flynn, who had re-entered the House, fresh from his encounter in the restaurant, concurred: ‘I wish to say that Deputy Costello’s statement is not a true picture of the incident.’

Within days, Flanagan and Flynn were hauled before the Dáil’s Committee on Procedure and Privileges, a committee which still oversees the conduct of deputies in the Dáil. The committee’s report into the matter some weeks later set out the position of both TDs, but still did not cast any light on the precise nature or import of Flanagan’s comment or why Flynn found it so particularly offensive:

Deputy J. Flynn stated to the Committee that he committed the assault above described because he had learnt that, in the course of a debate in the Dáil earlier on the same day while he was absent from the Chamber, Deputy O. Flanagan had passed a remark relating to him which would be generally understood as a gross reflection on his personal character … He felt that there was no adequate remedy, under existing Standing Orders, available to him in respect of such a remark when made under the immunity of parliamentary privilege. The remark to which Deputy J. Flynn took exception was made by Deputy O. Flanagan by way of interjection and, as explained by Deputy J. Flynn, conveyed offence to him of a gross personal nature by innuendo. Deputy O. Flanagan was not called to order at the time because – the Committee understands – the Leas Cheann Comhairle did not grasp all the implications of the remark owing to its ambiguity and, further, he would in any case hesitate to censure it since to do so would be to draw public attention to its possible scandalous connotation. Deputy O. Flanagan denied to the Committee that any such hidden meaning was intended by him and asserted that the reference related solely to Deputy J. Flynn’s political activities.2

The committee ruled that the use of violence in the precincts of Leinster House in this manner was ‘reprehensible in the extreme’, adding that ‘Deputy J. Flynn was guilty of contempt in taking, as it were, the law into his own hands in redress of a grievance properly a matter for the House itself.’ Flanagan’s remarks were found to be in breach of the order and decorum of the House. On 5 March 1952, six weeks after the incident, the Dáil accepted and adopted the committee’s report and Flynn was formally censured by the Ceann Comhairle from the chair: ‘In accordance with the provisions of this report, it becomes my duty to reprimand you, Deputy John Flynn, for the assault committed by you in the precincts of the Dáil on January 31, as such assault was in contempt of the privilege of this House.’3

So, what had prompted Oliver J Flanagan to make an obscure personal reference to Jack Flynn during a Dáil discussion? And why had the Kerry South TD taken such umbrage and become so infuriated that he punched Flanagan in the Dáil restaurant? The answer can be found by going back a few years to when, in controversial circumstances following an alleged scandal, Flynn – who had been a Fianna Fáil TD since 1932 – was unceremoniously removed from the party general election ticket by Éamon de Valera.

***

John (Jack) Flynn was born at Brackhill, Castlemaine, in 1894, one of five children of Edward and Johanna Flynn. A veteran of the War of Independence, he fought with his local IRA company, the 6th Battalion of the Kerry Brigade. He was involved in numerous engagements with the Crown forces, including an ambush just a stone’s throw from his home at Ballymacandy, between Milltown and Castlemaine, on 1 June 1921, in which several Black and Tans were killed. During the Civil War, he took the anti-Treaty position and became politically involved. He won a seat on Kerry County Council as a republican candidate in the Killorglin Electoral Area in 1926 and joined Fianna Fáil that same year. He became a resilient figure on the local authority. In 1932, he was the chairman of the County Board of Health, which secured funding of £55,000 from the Irish Hospital Sweeps for the construction of St Catherine’s Hospital in Tralee (now the headquarters of Kerry County Council). By the time St Catherine’s and a hospital at Edenburn in Ballymacelligott were opened, Flynn had been replaced by Councillor Kate Breen at the head of the Health Board because it became Fianna Fáil policy that TDs could not chair local authority sub-committees following the 1934 local elections. In 1929, Flynn was charged with membership of an illegal organisation and possession of unlicensed firearms and ammunition in the Circuit Court in Tralee. The jury returned verdicts of not guilty.

John (Jack) Flynn TD (The Kerryman).

Flynn was a well-known long-distance runner and a keen weight-lifter and shot-putter and his sporting profile no doubt enhanced his electoral prospects. Widely considered a hard-working and diligent public representative, he was elected to the Dáil in 1932, when Fianna Fáil swept to power under Éamon de Valera. Flynn headed the poll with nearly 13 per cent of the vote. In the then seven-seater Kerry constituency, Fianna Fáil won five of the seats. Joining the Castlemaine man in the Dáil were Eamonn Kissane, Fred Hugh Crowley, Thomas McEllistrim and Thomas O’Reilly. One of his Fianna Fáil successors in the Dáil, John O’Leary, a TD from 1966 to 1997, recalls Flynn being one of the dominant political figures in his youth and when he joined the party. Flynn, he says, was incredibly popular across the constituency of Kerry and later Kerry South, which he represented from 1937 onwards. O’Leary also recalls Flynn’s somewhat nomadic lifestyle:

He was a great character and was renowned, apparently, in his younger days for going to house parties and Biddy balls; he’d be invited, picked up and taken there – there was great kudos in having a TD at a party you might be organising … Flynn was a single man and someone of no fixed abode for much of his life as a politician. It was common for him to spend weekends in different houses around the constituency. People used often say that when the train was pulling into Killarney station on his return from Leinster House that he’d stick his head out the window to see who was there on the platform and where he could get lodgings for the weekend. Some one of his supporters from some part of the constituency would pick him up and take him to their area. His hosts would put on a party for him, but he would also use the opportunity to do some political work in the locality where he was staying. In that way, people in even the more remote parts of the constituency became familiar with him and were able to meet with him regularly to air their problems and grievances.4

Throughout his years in the Dáil, Flynn proved a diligent and regular contributor to debates and tabled questions to ministers with regularity. His focus was invariably rural matters such as fishing, agriculture and infrastructure, as well as social conditions and housing. Despite having retained a seat for Fianna Fáil from 1932, ahead of the 1943 general election, the frequent poll-topper was denied a nomination by the party leadership: the Irish Press noted that he had ‘withdrawn his candidature’.5 Contemporary newspaper accounts do not record why, but it was alleged that Flynn had been conducting a relationship with a young woman. John O’Leary recalls that the allegation doing the rounds was even more serious than that:

Though it was never proven, as far as I know, the rumour was that a girl had become pregnant by Flynn out of wedlock and that she had gone to England. It was never discussed publicly that I can recall but the story goes that when de Valera got wind of it, he threw Flynn out of the party in order to avoid scandal.6

It is assumed that this is what prompted Oliver J. Flanagan’s jibe linking Jack Flynn to the Adoption of Children Bill in the Dáil in January 1952. The implication was certainly sufficient to prompt fisticuffs in the Members’ Restaurants hours later.

***

With Flynn expelled from the party, at the 1943 general election, Fianna Fáil opted for a Cahersiveen solicitor, John B. Healy, to run with Fred Crowley or, as The Kerryman noted, Healy ‘comes on in room of Mr John Flynn’.7 Flynn didn’t contest the poll or the 1944 general election either, but he attempted to recover his political career pretty quickly and decided to run as an Independent candidate at the 1948 general election. Going into that election, there was an extraordinary situation in Kerry South in that Fianna Fáil held all three seats in the constituency. Fred Crowley from Killarney and John B. Healy from Cahersiveen had won two seats at the previous general election in May 1944, but when their constituency colleague and sitting Fine Gael TD, Fionán Lynch – a minister in some of the first cabinets – was appointed a Circuit Court judge soon after, the resulting by-election was won by Fianna Fáil’s Donal O’Donoghue from Glenflesk. Just a year later, in 1945, Fred Crowley’s death led to another by-election, which was won by his wife, Honor Mary Crowley. Crowley, O’Donoghue and Healy were nominated as the three Fianna Fáil candidates for the 1948 general election and faced the unlikely prospect of holding all of the three seats available.

Flynn declared himself an Independent republican candidate and he held several high-profile rallies around the constituency.8 He played up his War of Independence credentials and he claimed that Fianna Fáil no longer represented the republican tradition. John O’Leary notes that he achieved the support of many in sporting circles, including figures like Gerald Teahan from Keel, who came on as a substitute for Kerry in the Polo Grounds in the 1947 All-Ireland, and Dee O’Connor from Lawlor’s Cross near Killarney, a four-time All-Ireland winner.9 His nomination was proposed by an old IRA comrade and neighbour from Castlemaine, Dan Mulvihill, a fellow veteran of the Ballymacandy Ambush.

The February 1948 election saw Fianna Fáil lose two of their three seats. Flynn returned to the Dáil as an Independent, taking the second seat on almost 16 per cent of the vote. Patrick W. Palmer from Sneem won a seat for Fine Gael, with only Honor Crowley retaining a seat for Fianna Fáil. On his return to the Dáil, Flynn declined to support the nomination of his former party leader, Éamon de Valera, as Taoiseach. His Dáil statement on the nomination revealed something of the enmity between the pair, as he derided the record of his former party colleagues in government:

I personally do not approve of and do not intend to support Deputy Éamon de Valera as Taoiseach, as in supporting him I feel that I would have supported the Leader of a Government which had neglected my constituency for the past four years … nothing has been done, and there has been a wholesale flight from the land and from the countryside … As far as I can see, Government Ministers resident in Dublin consider Dublin as Ireland. They forget that we exist and that there are such places as Kerry … Remembering what has happened in the past four years, I could not personally support Deputy Éamon de Valera as representing that regime and the Government.10

Nine months later, following a short absence from Kerry County Council, Flynn headed the poll in the Killorglin Electoral Area, a seat he would hold until 1960. Whatever allegations had bedevilled him in the 1940s – whether based on fact or rumour and innuendo – had a limited impact on the Castlemaine farmer’s popularity.

***

No documentary evidence has ever been produced to suggest why Flynn was not a candidate for Fianna Fáil in 1943 and 1944, nor do the party’s archives spell out the reasons explicitly. But correspondence between party headquarters and the constituency organisation just weeks after the 1948 poll refer to the difficulties caused by the Jack Flynn ‘situation’ and his return to the Dáil as an Independent. Writing to the then general secretary of Fianna Fáil, Tom Mullins, the chairman of the Comhairle Dáil Cheantair in Kerry South, Fr Myles Allman – a brother of the well-known War of Independence veteran Dan Allman – described the party’s predicament:

13 February 1948

Dear Tom,

The situation in which our friend Jack Flynn has left us is not an enviable one. We have but one FF deputy left and she is a woman. The constituency is 70 old miles from East to West – Mrs Crowley in Killarney is over from 50 miles from the far western end.

I would like you to impress on the National Executive that while we are prepared to face up to any situation for the party’s sake our position is one that almost demands the appt [sic] of a Senator at the Caherciveen end.

This is no plea for giving us back Mr J. B. Healy. Personally, I don’t think that that would mend matters at all. If the organisation was let go bang [sic] by him as a T.D. we can’t expect it to be saved by him as a Senator…. There’s no flogging a dead horse.

The Fianna Fáil general secretary responded:

27 February 1948

Rev. Myles Allman P.P.

Glenflesk

Killarney

Co. Kerry

Dear Fr. Myles,

My apologies for delay in replying to yours of February 13th. To be quite honest, I found it impossible to concentrate on letter writing during the past couple of weeks. I know you will understand.

I discussed your suggestion for a senator with Mr. Kissane [outgoing Kerry North TD Eamonn Kissane] and others and they agree to do everything possible to put it into effect if you can name a suitable man who could be relied on to stand for the Dáil on the next occasion.

As the National Executive will consider Seanad nominations on Monday night, I shall be glad if you will ring or wire me on receipt of this.11

Flynn’s exile from Fianna Fáil was to be relatively short-lived, however. He managed to retain his Dáil seat at the 1951 general election as an Independent, again denying Fianna Fáil two seats in the Kerry South three-seater. The Kerryman records Flynn’s nominees for the 1951 poll: ‘His paper was signed by Thomas O’Connor, Farrantoureen, Lower Bridge St, Killorglin (proposer); Tod Mulvihill, Main Street, Killorglin (seconder); Michael O’Neill, Dromavelly, Killorglin; Michael Johnson, Main Street, Killorglin, Thomas McGillycuddy, do [ditto]; Micheal O’Callaghan, do; Patrick Sheehy, Reen, Killorglin; James Harmon, Farrantoureen; Michael McCarthy, Main Street, Killorglin; Daniel Griffin, Main Street, Killorglin.’12

By this time, Flynn’s animosity towards de Valera had softened considerably. Following the election, as an Independent deputy, he supported the nomination of his former party leader as Taoiseach. This was in stark contrast to the stance he had taken just three years previously. During the debate on the nomination of the Taoiseach in June 1951, he was challenged in the Dáil by Oliver J. Flanagan, who, months later, would be on the receiving end of Flynn’s fist:

I would like to hear Deputy John Flynn, in whose constituency one of the candidates was almost torn to bits. I would like to know if Deputy John Flynn told the people of South Kerry, who pulled the headlights off Deputy de Valera’s car, that Deputy Éamon de Valera was going to be his choice of Taoiseach in this country … I hope and trust that, within the next ten minutes, Deputy John Flynn will tell this House, and tell the people of South Kerry and of Ireland, who watched the reception which one of the candidates got in the Deputy’s constituency, whether he got a mandate from the people of South Kerry to put Deputy de Valera back as Taoiseach.13

Flynn declined to rise to Flanagan’s bait and was gushing in his praise for his former party leader:

I place my trust in him [De Valera] and I feel that good will come from it. In conclusion, I wish to say that I am voting for Deputy de Valera for two reasons, (1) that in my opinion he is the embodiment of the national ideal for which our people have fought and died and that he will pursue his policy to the end, and (2) that as the leader of a large Party he is in a position to govern this country and, as such, is in a better position to carry out a policy that will be acceptable to the people than Deputy [John A.] Costello [the Fine Gael leader] who would have to negotiate with a number of smaller Parties.14

Locally as well as nationally, by the summer of 1951, Flynn’s rapprochement with Fianna Fáil was well underway. Within months of voting for de Valera as Taoiseach, Flynn was re-admitted to his former party. At a meeting of the Comhairle Dáil Ceantair in Kerry South on 10 November 1951, ‘it was unanimously decided to admit Mr J. Flynn T.D. to membership of the Organisation’.15

***

One of Jack Flynn’s strongest allies in the Kerry South constituency was Cahersiveen party activist, Daniel (Dan) O’Donoghue, father of Ceann Comhairle John O’Donoghue. The former minister recalls that in his youth, the family had a spare room which was known as ‘Jack Flynn’s room’ in which the TD would spend the night if he was travelling in the Cahersiveen area.16 Dan O’Donoghue, also a veteran of the War of Independence, remained a close friend and supporter of Flynn’s, even when the latter was thrown out of the party and despite the fact that Fianna Fáil TD John B. Healy was O’Donoghue’s uncle and was a neighbour of the O’Donoghue family in Cahersiveen. O’Donoghue sought the Fianna Fáil nomination for the local elections of 1955 in the Killorglin Electoral Area, but failed to win the party’s backing. He decided to contest the election as an Independent. Jack Flynn, by then back in the fold, appealed to O’Donoghue to stay with the organisation and said that ‘he himself on one occasion had been disowned by Fianna Fáil but that he had stood by them and was now back in the ranks’.17 Flynn’s pleas fell on deaf ears and though Dan O’Donoghue didn’t succeed in 1955, he was elected to Kerry County Council as an Independent in 1960. His wife, Mary, was co-opted to his seat on his death in 1964 and re-joined Fianna Fáil.

***

Jack Flynn retained his seat for Fianna Fáil at the general election of 1954, but he was dramatically unseated in 1957 when Sinn Féin won its first and only Dáil seat in Kerry South courtesy of John Joe Rice from Kenmare. The defeat heralded the beginning of the end of Flynn’s political career and in 1960 he stood down as a member of Kerry County Council. In October 1957, Jack Flynn and his wife, Mary (née Ryle), sold their forty-acre farm and home at Brackhill, Castlemaine,18 and moved to Killarney, where the couple ran the East Avenue House guesthouse on a site which had been owned by Mary’s first husband, Denis O’Connor, a Tralee garage owner and member of the army who had died in 1946. Following the sale of that business in the 1960s, the couple retired to Tralee and lived in Caherslee. Jack Flynn died in Dublin on 22 August 1968.