Noël Browne

Noël Christopher Browne (20 December 1915 – 21 May 1997) was an Irish politician who served as Minister for Health from 1948 to 1951 and Leader of the National Progressive Democrats from 1958 to 1963. He served as a Teachta Dála (TD) from 1948 to 1954, 1957 to 1973 and 1977 to 1982. He was a Senator for the University of Dublin from 1973 to 1977.[1]

Noël Browne
Minister for Health
In office 18 February 1948 – 13 June 1951
Taoiseach	John A. Costello
Preceded by	James Ryan
Succeeded by	John A. Costello
Leader of the National Progressive Democrats
In office 23 July 1958 – 4 April 1963
Preceded by	New office
Succeeded by	Office abolished
Teachta Dála
In office June 1981 – February 1982
Constituency	Dublin North-Central
In office June 1977 – June 1981
Constituency	Dublin Artane
In office June 1969 – February 1973
Constituency	Dublin South-East
In office March 1957 – April 1965
Constituency	Dublin South-East
In office February 1948 – May 1954
Constituency	Dublin South-East
Senator
In office 1 May 1973 – 17 August 1977
Constituency	University of Dublin
Personal details
Born	Noël Christopher Browne 20 December 1915 Waterford, Ireland
Died	21 May 1997 (aged 81) Baile na hAbhann, County Galway, Ireland
Nationality	Irish
Political party	Independent (1951–53, 1954–58, 1977–81, 1979–80, 1982–97)
Other political affiliations	Clann na Poblachta (1946–54) Fianna Fáil (1953–54) National Progressive Democrats (1958–63) Labour Party (1963–77) Socialist Labour Party (1977–82)
Spouse(s)	Phyllis Browne ​ ​ (m. 1947; his death 1997)​
Education	Beaumont College
Alma mater	Trinity College, Dublin

He holds the distinction of being one of only seven TDs to be appointed to the cabinet on the start of their first term in the Dáil. His controversial Mother and Child Scheme in effect brought down the First Inter-Party Government of Taoiseach John A. Costello in 1951.

Browne was a well-known, but at times highly controversial public representative, and managed to be a TD for five political parties (two of which he co-founded). These were Clann na Poblachta (resigned), Fianna Fáil (expelled), National Progressive Democrats (co-founder), Labour Party (resigned) and the Socialist Labour Party (co-founder).

Early life and career

Noël Browne was born in Waterford, but grew up in the Bogside area of Derry. The Browne family also lived in Athlone and Ballinrobe for a period of time. His mother Mary Therese Cooney was born in 1885 in Hollymount, County Mayo; a plaque has been erected there in her memory. His father worked as an inspector for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children and, partly as a result of this work, all of the Browne family became infected with tuberculosis. Both parents died of the disease during the 1920s; his father was the first to die, leaving only £100 behind to support a wife and seven children. Fearing that if she and the children remained in Ireland that they would be forced into a workhouse, Mary (already by this point dying of TB) sold every possession the Brownes' had and took the family to London, England. With two days of their arrival, Mary was dead, later buried in a pauper's grave. Of her seven children, six contracted tuberculosis. Noël was only one of two Browne children to survive into adulthood those bouts with TB. The only sibling who survived with him was his brother Jody, who developed both a hunchback and a cleft palate.[2] Because of Jody's conditions, Noël described Jody as completely unwanted by society, which his sister to commit Jody to a workhouse. There, Jody later died on an operating table when, in Noël's own words, a doctor performed experimental plastic surgery on Jody. Jody too was buried in a pauper's grave.[3]

In 1929, he was admitted free of charge to St Anthony's, a preparatory school in Eastbourne, England. He then won a scholarship to Beaumont College, the Jesuit public school near Old Windsor, Berkshire, where he befriended Neville Chance, a wealthy boy from Dublin. Neville's father, the eminent surgeon Arthur Chance (son of surgeon Sir Arthur Chance), subsequently paid Browne's way through medical school at Trinity College, Dublin.

In 1940, while still a student, Browne suffered a serious relapse of tuberculosis. His treatment at a sanatorium in Midhurst, Sussex was paid for by the Chance family. He recovered, passed his medical exams in 1942, and started his career as a medical intern at Dr Steevens' Hospital in Dublin. He subsequently worked in numerous sanatoria throughout Ireland and England, witnessing the ravages of the disease. He soon concluded that politics was the only way in which he could make an attack on the scourge of tuberculosis.

Entry into Politics

The poverty and tragedy that had shaped Browne's childhood deeply affected him. He considered both his survival and his level of education a complete fluke, a stroke of random chance that saved him when he was seemingly destined to die unknown and in poverty like the rest of his family. Browne found this completely distasteful and was moved to enter politics as a means to ensure no one else would suffer the same fate that had befallen his family.[3]

Browne joined the new Irish republican party Clann na Poblachta and was elected to Dáil Éireann for the Dublin South-East constituency at the 1948 general election.[4] To the surprise of many, party leader Seán MacBride chose Browne to be one of the party's two ministers in the new government. Browne became one of the few TDs appointed a Minister on their first day in Dáil Éireann, when he was appointed Minister for Health.

Minister for Health

A 'White Paper' on proposed healthcare reforms had been prepared by the previous government, and resulted in the 1947 Health Act. In February 1948, Browne became Minister for Health and started the reforms advocated by the Paper and introduced by the Act.

The health reforms coincided with the development of a new vaccine and of new drugs (e.g. BCG and penicillin) that helped to treat a previously untreatable group of medical conditions. Browne introduced mass free screening for tuberculosis sufferers and launched a huge construction program to build new hospitals and sanitoria, financed by the income and accumulated investments from the Health Department-controlled Hospital Sweeps funds. This, along with the introduction of Streptomycin, helped dramatically reduce the incidence of tuberculosis in Ireland.

As Minister for Health Browne came into conflict with the bishops of the Catholic Church and the medical profession over the Mother and Child Scheme. This plan, also introduced by the 1947 Health Act, provided for free state-funded healthcare for all mothers and children aged under 16, with no means test, a move which was regarded as radical at the time in Ireland, but not in the rest of Europe. Virtually all doctors in private practice opposed the scheme, because it would undermine the "fee for service" model on which their income depended.

The Church hierarchy, which controlled many hospitals, vigorously opposed the expansion of "socialised medicine" in the Irish republic (though they never objected to its provision via the British National Health Service in Northern Ireland). They claimed that the Mother and Child Scheme interfered with parental rights, and feared that the provision of non-religious medical advice to mothers would lead to birth control contrary to Catholic teaching. They greatly disliked Browne, seeing him as a "Trinity Catholic" (one who had defied the Church's ruling that the faithful should not attend Trinity College Dublin, which had been founded by Protestants and for many years did not allow Catholics to study there).

He was the only government Minister to attend the 1949 Church of Ireland funeral of Douglas Hyde, first President of Ireland.

Under pressure from bishops, the coalition government backed away from the Mother and Child Scheme and forced Browne's resignation as Minister for Health.

He gave his version of events in his resignation speech to the Dáil on 12 April 1951. In particular, he deplored that the government had referred his Scheme to the Church for approval, taking care to describe it to the Church as his plan and not as government policy, giving him no option but to resign as Minister.[5] The Taoiseach, John A. Costello, immediately retorted that "I have seldom listened to a statement in which there were so many—let me say it as charitably as possible—inaccuracies, misstatements and misrepresentations", and delivered his full reply several hours later.[6] Following his departure from government, Browne embarrassed his opponents by arranging for The Irish Times to publish Costello's and MacBride's correspondence with the Catholic hierarchy, which detailed their capitulation to the bishops.[7]

The controversy over the Mother and Child Scheme led to the fall of the coalition government in which Browne had served as a Minister. But Church opposition to socialised medicine continued under the subsequent Fianna Fáil-led government. The hierarchy would not accept a no-means-test mother-and-infant scheme even when Fianna Fáil reduced the age limit from sixteen years to six weeks, and the government again backed down.

Later political career

Monument to Browne in Co. Waterford

After his resignation as Minister for Health, Browne left Clann na Poblachta, but was re-elected to the Dáil as an Independent TD from Dublin South-East in the subsequent election.

Browne joined Fianna Fáil in 1953, but lost his Dáil seat at the 1954 general election and was later expelled from the party. At the 1957 general election he was re-elected for Dublin South-East as an Independent TD. In 1958, he founded the National Progressive Democrats with Jack McQuillan. Browne held on to his seat at the 1961 general election, but in 1963, he and McQuillan joined the Labour Party, disbanding the National Progressive Democrats. However, Browne lost his seat at the 1965 general election.

He was re-elected as a Labour Party TD at the 1969 general election, again for Dublin South-East. He failed to be nominated by the Labour Party for the 1973 general election, but instead won a seat in Seanad Éireann before being expelled from the Labour Party. He remained in the Seanad until the 1977 general election, when he gained a Dáil seat as an Independent TD once again, at Dublin Artane; he then became involved in the Socialist Labour Party and was briefly its only TD, securing election for Dublin North-Central at the 1981 general election. Browne retired from politics at the February 1982 general election.

Offer of presidential candidacy

In 1990, a number of left-wing representatives within the Labour Party, led by Michael D. Higgins, approached Browne and suggested that he should be the party's candidate in the presidential election due later that year. Though in failing health, Browne agreed. However, the offer horrified party leader Dick Spring and his close associates for two reasons. Firstly, the leadership had secretly decided to run Mary Robinson, a barrister and former senator.

Secondly, many around Spring were "appalled" at the idea of running Browne, believing he had "little or no respect for the party" and "was likely in any event to self-destruct as a candidate."[8] When Spring informed Browne by telephone that the party's Administrative Council had chosen Robinson over him, Browne hung up the telephone. Browne spent the remaining seven years of his life constantly criticising Robinson who had gone on to win the election, thus becoming the seventh President of Ireland, and who was considered highly popular during her term. During the campaign he also indicated support for the rival Fine Gael candidate, Austin Currie.[9]

Personality

Few figures in 20th-century Ireland were as controversial as Noël Browne. To his supporters he was a dynamic liberal who stood up to conservative and reactionary Catholicism. To his opponents he was an unstable, temperamental and difficult individual who was the author of most of his own misfortune. Browne further alienated the middle ground in 1986, with the publishing of his autobiography Against the Tide. Historians like Dr. Ruth Barrington, who had written extensively about Irish health policy and had access to the files from the 1940s and 1950s, questioned the book's reliability.[10]

Writing a decade later, one of the chief officials of the Labour Party, Fergus Finlay, said Browne had developed into a "bad tempered and curmudgeonly old man".[11] Historian and political scientist Maurice Manning wrote that Browne "had the capacity to inspire fierce loyalty, but many of those who worked with and against him over the years found him difficult, self-centred, unwilling to accept the good faith of his opponents and often profoundly unfair in his intolerance of those who disagreed with him".[12]

However, some of this "difficulty" arose from the fact that Noël Browne was deaf in one ear from an infection. He also suffered numerous attacks of tuberculosis throughout his career, a fact which he kept private. Like most public figures, he rarely showed unpleasant traits to the public.

After retiring from politics, Browne moved with his wife Phyllis to Baile na hAbhann, County Galway, where he died on 21 May 1997, aged 81.

Legacy

In a 2010 RTÉ public poll, he came in the top 10 of Ireland's Greatest.

References

1. "Noël Browne". Oireachtas Members Database. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
2. "Church Lane, Ballinrobe Dr. Noel Brown's house". Retrieved 27 December 2020.
3. Doctor Noel Browne At 70. RTÉ. 1985.
4. "Noël Browne". ElectionsIreland.org. Retrieved 14 August 2012.
5. Dáil report - Volume 125 - 12 April, 1951. "Personal Statement by a Deputy."; seen on 11 December 2011 Archived 21 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine
6. Dáil report - Volume 125 - 12 April, 1951. Adjournment Debate—Resignation of Minister; seen on 11 December 2011 Archived 16 October 2013 at the Wayback Machine
7. Browne, Noël, Against the Tide, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1986, p. 186.
8. Fergus Finlay, Snakes and Ladders (New Island Books, 1998) p. 84.
9. Lorna Siggins, The Woman Who Took Power in the Park. (Mainstream Publishing, 1997) p. 133.
10. Many other writers also disputed his claims. His claims about the relationship between ministers came in for universal dismissal. For example, he claimed a poor relationship existed between Daniel Morrissey and James Dillon, with the latter showing contempt for the former and humiliating him at cabinet meetings. All other witnesses, including colleagues (especially Dillon himself and then Chief Whip and future Taoiseach Liam Cosgrave), civil servants and contemporary records suggest that both men had a close friendship and superb relationship. Browne's account of the events surrounding the declaration of the Republic, including a supposed offer of the Taoiseach to resign, is also disputed by all the other witnesses. No record of the Taoiseach's supposed resignation offer exists.
11. Fergus Finlay, op.cit p. 84.
12. Maurice Manning, James Dillon, A Biography, p. 228.

Sources

• Noël Browne, Against the Tide, Gill & Macmillan, ISBN 0-7171-1458-9.
• Ruth Barrington, Health, Medicine and Politics in Ireland 1900-1970, Institute of Public Administration, 1987, ISBN 0-906980-72-0.
• Fergus Finlay, Snakes and Ladders, New Island Books, 1998, ISBN 1-874597-76-6.
• Gabriel Kelly et al. (eds), Irish Social Policy in Context, UCD Press, 1999, ISBN 1-900621-25-8.
• Maurice Manning, James Dillon: A Biography, Wolfhound Press, 2000, ISBN 0-86327-823-X.
• Lorna Siggins, The Woman Who Took Power in the Park, Mainstream Publishing, 1997, ISBN 1-85158-805-1.
• John Horgan, Noël Browne: Passionate Outsider, Gill & Macmillan, 2000, ISBN 0-7171-2809-1.