Breaking the Mould

On a cold December morning, four days before Christmas 1985, a new political party was launched on a deeply depressing Irish political scene. At a hastily organised press conference, Desmond O'Malley, Mary Harney and Michael McDowell told a group of sceptical journalists about their plans to radically alter the nature of Irish politics. Despite the cynicism of the depressed 80s, that is precisely what the PDs have done. Their low-tax, free-trade agenda has been the dominant philosophy of the Celtic tiger and has transformed the whole intellectual climate of Irish public life. The PDs have been vastly more important than their time in government has warranted, impressive though that has been. It was they who finally subverted the Fianna Fail core principle of never entering coalition; it is they who have set out the intellectual template for the politics of modern Ireland; it is they who have fundamentally changed the climate of public discourse. Stephen Collins' authoritative history is based on his many years as one of Ireland's most distinguished political journalists; on interviews with leading figures in the party over its twenty years; and on a close observation of the party in power. Love them or hate them, there is no denying the pivotal role that the PDs have played in the making of the new Ireland. '...an excellent, and I believe very accurate, account of the first two decades of the history of this new party' - Garret FitzGerald, "The Irish Times". '...well researched, fluently written and balanced in its judgments. This is the authoritative account of the Progressive Democrats' - Magill. 'Stephen Collins has produced something of a scoop: the inside story of how the Progressive Democrats were formed' - John Bowman chooses one of his books of the year in the "Irish Independent".