Life in the oul' dog yet - as FF go back to the old style conventions

The official Fianna Fail estimate of the attendance at their Galway Conference on Saturday, was put at 430. In other words – ‘there’s life in the ould dog yet,’ despite the awful opinion polls and FF support running at eleven points behind Fine Gael.

Saturday in Galway’s Clayton Hotel, where East Galway and West Galway FF gathered for a joint conference, was FF back to the style of grassroots attendance that the party could muster in the days when candidate selection conventions were ‘a night out for the cumainn members’ and the delegates had a vote on the key issue of candidate selection.

And it’s hardly surprising that – probably in view of the need to get members involved as much as possible – the party has decided that it is going back to something akin to the old selection conventions in the months to come.

It may not quite be back to the type of gatherings which could keep hundreds in the Temperance Hall in Loughrea until four in the morning, and some of the women delegates brought their own sandwiches and flasks of tea.

But the word in FF circles is that all Cumainn have been informed that conventions are on the way back – having been replaced in recent years by an interview system in which key politicians and officials looked the potential candidates over, and then recommended who should run.

The idea was to stop conventions making the kind of decisions where there were too many candidates and the wrong people might be chosen because they were weak and less of a long-term threat to someone like a councillor or a TD or a minister.

The new interview system gave tickets with the minimum number of candidates, arguably made vote management more efficient, and kept real discipline in the vote.

I have to stress that bringing back conventions was NOT one of the issues discussed at Saturday’s East and West Galway Constituencies Conference in the Clayton. Organisation was not discussed, nor conventions.

But, given that the press were not allowed to attend the sessions and even had to take the word of officials as to how many attended, we had to pick up what information we could around the periphery.The word had been going about in FF that conventions were likely to return – if for no other reason than to ensure maximum member involvement in the FF organisation, especially at election time. The conventions will have guidelines laid down for them on numbers of candidates to be selected and possible other recommendations. 

For more, read this week's Connacht Tribune.