MOST political observers will tell you that government plans — be they economic, social or international — usually come in two parts. And they can be labelled (1) smoke; (2) mirrors.
Because of course public perception can mean the difference between being in power or not.
One Cork man learnt that lesson very early in his career. In Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund’s book Get In (The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer) the crucial part played by Morgan McSweeney, the prime minister’s chief-of-staff, is given a granular examination.
The first chapter, entitled The Irishman, delves into McSweeney’s career arc, beginning with his departure from Cork bound for England. It begins in 1994:
“One afternoon, a seventeen-year-old set out from Cork . . . . boarded a Slatterys coach to London, destined for the Fulham home of an aunt. Thirty-six hours later he arrived in a city whose political class was ill at ease with itself.”
As Maguire ad Pogrund put it: nobody knew that a new chapter in the contested, troubled history of the Labour Party had begun, and begun “far away, with the tentative steps of a lazy boy at a bus station”.
They meant McSweeney.
Get In continues: “Had anyone in Cork been told, they would not have believed it. Morgan McSweeney was a slacker. He hated school. He had little time for the political obsessions of his parents [Fine Gael supporters], an accountant and a clerical worker.”
The character sketch continues: “Only the most conscientious student of Irish geography might know Macroom, his home town, site of the fiercest fighting in the Irish Civil War.” [*What the authors don’t mention is that those with a deep interest in the Eurovision might also be aware of Macroom — it’s Bambie Thug’s home town.}
Get In doesn’t go down the rabbit hole of the Eurovision. Instead it continues its brief of focusing on the relationship between Starmer and the Cork man.
Like thousands before him, once in London McSweeney worked on building sites. But he didn’t fancy it. “Winter came and he concluded that he did not much like labouring,” Get In explains. “He went to university instead. Within twelve months he had dropped out.”
Some travelling the world ensued, then back in London, his march to the centre of British politics began when he enrolled at Middlesex University and joined the Labour Party. By 2001 he was working in its headquarters, in the Millbank Tower, on a university placement.
McSweeney’s rise is a fascinating part of this book; later, his manipulation of the levers of power within the Labour Party is thoroughly impressive.
One particular episode — and there are many — shows his clear focus on getting Starmer into No. 10, no matter what.
According to Maguire and Pogrund, at the 2022 Labour Party conference in Liverpool — just a week after Queen Elizabeth’s death — McSweeney announced two changes to normal conference proceedings. The conference slogan ‘A Fresh Start’ was out. Also, delegates would observe a minute’s silence and then sing the national anthem (the British one, not Amhrán na bhFiann).
Odd though this may seem, no Labour Party conference had ever sung the British national anthem at conference before. The Red Flag yes (with words by Meath man Jim Connell) and Jerusalem. (Socialists particularly like the lines in Jerusalem about the ‘dark Satanic mills’.)
But never God Save the King/Queen, with its lyrics of deference and divine providence. This time however, McSweeney was thinking the British electorate, elections, and the image of the party. A show of patriotism was required in Liverpool in the weeks after the Queen’s death.
But agreement was not universal. Influential leader of the General and Municipal Workers' Union leader Gary Smith (GMB) said it was ‘a f***ing stupid idea’.
Here was McSweeney, according to Get In, proposing to compel an entire hall of activists to sing a national anthem they resented in a city whose football fans met every rendition with a chorus of boos and whistles.
McSweeney met the union leader to brief him, in Glasgow’s Horseshoe pub. He showed Smith the branding. Union jacks everywhere. It could have been a loyalist housing estate.
Smith thought it looked like Ibrox, the Rangers ground. Smith was a fan of Hibernian (Hibs), Edinburgh’s Catholic club `— one that James Connelly himself supported.
Morgan McSweeney told the union leader that, along with his fellow union members of the same persuasion, he would have to swallow hard and put up with God Save the King. They wanted Labour in power, after all.
Smith finally accepted this, and turned to a crowd of burly men – gas workers who paid their dues to the GMB.
According to Get IN, the conversation in the Horseshoe went like this:
Gary Smith: “Billy, come over here.”
Billy was the biggest gas fitter, six foot four.
Smith: “This is Billy. He’s a Rangers man. Billy, this lunatic Irishman wants to sing God Save the King in Liverpool.”
Smith continued saying that it was still a sub-optimal idea (not his exact words). Nonetheless he could see some merit in it for the good of the Party, so told McSweeney: “If we bring Billy and his Rangers mates down, you can put them across the front row and they’ll blast it out for you. Go ahead, Billy.’
As Get In tells it, Billy obliged. “‘GOD SAVE OUR …’ After his sixth pint McSweeney took Billy’s card. ‘Have you got more of you?’ ‘There’s loads of us,’ said Billy. ‘We’ll come to your conference, down to Liverpool.’”
McSweeney knew, as did the Labour Party hierarchy, that a single voice of dissent or disrespect to the mourning nation over the loss of their Queen could destroy everything. But a lusty rendition of the Anthem would be an important sign of a changed Labour Party. But any deviation from that, either during the Anthem or the minute’s silence, would destroy this new image, writes Maguire and Pogrund.
In the event the minute’s silence passed without disruption. Then conference sang God Save the King resoundingly, with the Rangers men giving it wellie
“Are you going to sing?” a colleague asked McSweeney at the conference.
Perhaps remembering the fierce fighting in Macroom during the War of Independence, the division caused by the Civil War in the locality, and with memories of his grandfather serving alongside Michael Collins, McSweeney said, “No.”
The rest of the Labour Party did.
Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer by Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund
See More: County Cork, Labour Party, Politics
