There is an odd protocol and civility about Irish election counts. People who have been sworn enemies for weeks and months, years in some cases, generally manage to avoid carrying that over into the day and sometimes days of waiting about for actual results, tallies, or just the latest rumours.
There is, of course, little point in growling at people once the votes have been cast and nothing in the boxes is going to change – although some people believe that the ballot-altering elves might wander in with their pencils in the early hours, and there they brazen-faced will alter thousands of votes to whichever side the elves favour. The other one obviously.
It is somewhat like a hurling or football match in that win or lose you generally – unless you are a cantankerous curmudgeon who harbours grudges forever – shake hands and part amicably. Or pretend to at least. Where it differs from a match of course is that the teams are not forced to spend the next two or three days together in the same dressing room. Even the winners will quickly tire of the sadistic pleasure that might be extracted from such a scenario.
So it is, in my experience at least, that relations tend to thaw as the hours while by slowly and initial scowls or ridiculously elaborate devices to avoid eye contact or recognition of the existence of the “others” dissipates. In some cases this is replaced by abrupt nods, then slightly warmer inclinations of one’s head, to perhaps a curt “how’s things going?” to even slightly awkward conversations if you happen to find oneself tallying the same box or perhaps in a queue for bodily sustenance or a pint of porter across the road.
My own situation is exacerbated by the fact that I now find myself no longer on the team with which I spent a considerable part of my life. That includes 20 years at election counts with some of the people who were in the RDS at the weekend, and some of whom I was directly involved in their election campaigns. Some recall that fondly. Others not so much.
Put it this way, I have some small understanding of how Davy Fitz must feel on the sideline in Ennis managing the team playing his native Clare, or Henry against the Stripey Men in Kilkenny sporting his maroon top. I would be lying if I were to say that it is not a strange and sometimes uncomfortable position.
Thankfully that did not persist for long at the RDS other than with one of two people who it would be fair to say of them, “If looks could kill, etc.” Only one or two of those are people I either knew for a long time or liked. Mostly, people who have known one another for a long time can remember some common ground that provides a meeting place, even amid a parting of ways.
Sadly, some of that over the weekend was due to the recent death of a person who many of us old timers had known for many years. A woman who had spent long and horrendous years in an English prison. Unlike most of us whose enforced sabbatical was relatively tolerable, Ella and her comrade Martina had endured long years that could without exaggeration be compared to the experience of Tom Clarke, Nally and the Fenians of the 1880s.
Anyway, it was a way of placing things into perspective. As was the loss of seats by others who I would have considered to be friends for many years and would still talk to on the rare occasions our paths cross. The GAA is a handy icebreaker too. I was not the only person rueing being kept away from watching the Munster final between Limerick and Clare.
The Dublin hurlers’ humiliation at the hands of the Cats on Saturday night was either a common reason for despair or the occasion of some pleasure and even mirth for certain persons exiled among us Dubs. When I asked one candidate whose hope of a seat had vanished early on Saturday whether he had been at Croke Park his response was that one humiliating defeat was enough to be going on with for one day.
Similar awkward goodwill sort of broke out on most sides. The tallies are a great means of creating a common objective among foes as numbers and intelligence is shared and jointly collated, Although my impression would be that this was much more efficient and accurate in the days when it was mostly pen and paper and the odd calculator was the only thing approaching the techie sophistication that abounds at counts these days.
Among the odder sights which caught my eye was an amicable exchange between members of the National Party and People Before Profit. They had, it seems, a common interest and not really a conflicting one in later transfers but tallies clearly make strange bedfellows, not suggesting that matters advanced to that stage.
The NP and PBP also found themselves somewhat aligned in Blanchardstown where Fine Gael called for a recount after candidates for the first two parties finished on exactly the same amount of votes on the final count, 20 ahead of the Fine Gaeler. The result remained as it was and PBP picked up another seat and the NP their first and only seat in an election, with a win for Patrick Quinlan.
Former Lord Mayor Christy Burke must now be among a very small handful of people who have been elected for almost 40 years, since 1985, to a local Council. In congratulating him I referred to ‘longevity’ but was corrected by Christy to his own descriptive of “father of the Council” or something to that effect.
It is mostly all over now at local level and we nerds will be watching the European counts over today, tomorrow and possibly beyond. Hopefully without the need for us to be there all day again. It is an interesting way to spend a weekend, and while the consequences are important, we are reminded of the need to retain a wider perspective. Not to mention courtesy and respect.