COUNTY VIEW: Oliver J Flanagan, the man who wanted to be called ‘Sir’

The annual release of the archival State papers make for welcome news fodder for the national media in the fallow final days of each calendar year. The disclosures of secret memos, off-the-record observations, and the bread-and-butter interactions of political leaders make for interesting background detail to what at the time were the major events of the day.
The State papers are normally of grave import, but there is always a gem or two of humorous provenance to be found in the heavy detail. This year, the incident of the visit of the Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsen, in 1994 recalls memories of when the Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, was left waiting at the bottom of the aircraft steps at Shannon while Russian officials tried, without success, to rouse their leader from his alcohol induced slumber.
His non-appearance for the visit caused much mutual embarrassment, allayed somewhat by the diplomatic discretion – much to the gratitude of Moscow – which the Irish accorded the incident.
But the real gem of this year’s crop was the time and attention devoted to the question of whether the Laois/Offaly TD, Oliver J Flanagan, was entitled to style himself ‘Sir Oliver’, having been invested by the Vatican into the Knighthood of St Gregory.
The colourful Flanagan had claimed that, under pressure from his constituents, he had decided to adopt the Sir Oliver appellation. However, the protocol section of the Government thought otherwise, finally ruling that Papal honours do not equate to Royal honours, which, subject to approval of the Government, allow the recipient to be addressed as ‘Sir’ or ‘Lord’. 
But the rebuke would hardly have bothered Oliver J, a politician who loomed large on the Irish landscape for the 40 four years he served as a TD. Divisive, colourful, controversial and eccentric, he was a household name across the land, well known as much for his intemperate views as for the masterful way he courted the media and garnered the headlines.
He had been elected a TD in June 1943 at age 23, and went on to contest 14 general elections over a career of forty-three years, topping the poll in eleven of these contests. His career began as an Independent, representing a grouping known as The Monetary Reform Party. Although its central theme was said to be poorly understood by the electorate (involving a redistribution of wealth under a system of social credit, designed to ease poverty and to provide full employment), his main target soon became clear. The world’s wealth, he opined, was being held in the hands of the Jews and the Freemasons, and until they were toppled there could be no justice in the world.
In his maiden speech to the Dáil in July 1943, he urged the Government to emulate the Nazis and ‘rout the Jews out of the country’. “Where the bees are, there is honey; and where the Jews are, there is money,” he said. Some years later, he advocated the Government turn the Emergency Powers Act on the Jews, ‘who sacrificed Our Saviour nineteen-hundred years ago, and who are crucifying us every day of the week’.
He was highly suspicious of the banking system, at one stage declaring that he would give a medal or a pension to every man who robbed a bank, a piece of advice that saw him brought before the court on a charge of breaching the peace, the outcome of which saw him promise not to repeat that particular call to action. 
A noted Catholic lay activist with a deep fear of the permissive society that he believed was threatening to undermine Catholic morality, he famously told RTÉ that there was no sex in Ireland before television.
But his big moment came in 1947 when, in his eagerness to oust the Fianna Fáil government, he levelled allegations of corruption against the Taoiseach Éamon de Valera and the Minister for Industry and Commerce Seán Lemass. They were proposing, he said, the selling off of Locke’s Distillery in Kilbeggan to a Swiss syndicate in contravention of the law. He claimed that De Valera’s son, Vivion, had been gifted a gold watch as part of the payoff.
A tribunal of inquiry, headed by three judges, found ‘not a scintilla of evidence to support Flanagan’s claims, which were made with a degree of recklessness amounting to irresponsibility’. But despite the judges’ findings that he had lied to the tribunal, the result had no effect on his electoral popularity, his vote increasing by 50 percent in the ensuing general election.
Oliver J Flanagan eventually joined Fine Gael in 1952, and later became Minister for Defence in 1976. On his retirement, his son Charlie succeeded him and went on to become Minister for Justice, retiring from the Dáil last year.