Paul Dillon, the New FF President of UCDSU

national | miscellaneous | news report Thursday March 06, 2003 00:26 by Truth in UCD

How and why the old alliance of the soft left and the KBC was reborn in UCD and the compromises that they made for power

The Kevin Barry Cumann (the UCD Branch of Fianna Fail) has again been successful in winning the UCDSU annual sabbatical elections. Four of the five new officers are either members of the KBC or are closely aligned with UCD’s most powerful behind the scenes manipulator. After reading a previous posting regarding the fact that two prominent KBCers (Ray Dillon and Eamon O’Linnion) actively supported Dillon’s campaign, I undertook a little investigation as to the exact links between the most powerful political party on campus and the new boys that are running the union.

But 1st it is necessary to distinguish between the Hourihane section of the Union and the KBC. While it is true that Aonghus did indeed serve as vice-chair of the KBC before he was elected president, the ties between him and them have disappeared recently. The reasons for this breakdown go back to the fact that he failed to re-appoint party hacks to the union staff positions last year. He replaced Cathal Lee (current KBC chair) with Alan Rafferty (C&E auditor) and Donnachadh Woulfe (B&L), both of whom have no role in the party. Then he failed to get the USI disaffiliation referendum passed. The final nail in the coffin of the Hourihane/KBC relationship was when he fired the editor of the Observer Enda Curran for publishing racist material. Curran is a former officer of the KBC and was the campaign manager of Eamon O’Linnion (it should be noted here that Dillon and Aidan Regan were two of only three SU councillors to vote against the motion calling on him resign, coincidence?). Therefore it is not correct to think of Hourihane as the KBC union president. Nor is it correct to think of his chosen successor, Woulfe as the KBC candidate.

But is there the evidence linking Dillon with the KBC? Apart from the fact that a current KBC officer, Ray Dillon and a former Chair, O’Linnion, were active in his campaign, there is a considerable amount.

1.As early as Christmas, prominent members of the CFE (including Cian O’Callaghan and Finbarr Dwyer) were told by KBC leaders that they would support a serious moderate left wing candidate (ie not Paul Murphy) to defeat Abey Campbell.

2.Dillon was selected as the perfect candidate as his relative good looks, good speaking ability and appearance of genuineness made him very electable. His almost complete inexperience would make him very open to advice when he got into officer, and the KBC could continue to exert their influence from their man in the president’s office.

3.Aidan Regan was given a clear run at the deputy presidency when the current KBC secretary, Greg O’Neill decided not to run. O’Neill had put together a campaign team headed by Oisin O’Sullivan, and consisting of the vast majority of class reps and society hacks. It is quite unlikely Regan could have beaten the full KBC machine, but O’Neill withdrew on condition that the CFE would not run any candidate against Jennifer Allen for welfare. I’ll return to the role of the welfare officer later. Regan would also be acceptable as a sabbat as he was member of the L&H committee and as such a committed member of the establishment.

4.Anyone who has fought an election against the KBC knows that they are formidable opponents. So the questions remains where were they during the election? As they could not be seen to be actively involved, as HQ might not look favourably on them helping elect a Labour member, they took the only option open to them: they concentrated on presenting Dillon as the perfect candidate and running the elections so as to ensure he won no matter how many votes were cast for his opponents. The first part was easy enough. After writing his manifesto (you’ll notice it bears striking similarities to Aonghus’s two years ago), and teaching him the classic KBC style lecture address (complain about everything and propose no solutions), they allowed his campaign to be run by a complete unknown, Dermot Looney, who was assisted by daily de-briefings.

5.As for the second part, the KBC were assisted by the fact they had already installed one of their people, Michael Clark, as union Returning Officer. Clark is a member of the local Ogra FF committee in Dun Laoghaire. He created a campus legend out of the KBC candidate for Ents, Dave Sherry, by his total over-reaction to Sherry’s stunt of jumping in the lake, thereby guaranteeing him the election. He provided the details of Woulfe’s posters so that fakes could be produced and then he was able to fine Woulfe and effectively remove him from the election. On polling day itself, he appointed “appropriate” people to man certain polling stations. Greg O’Neill, KBC Secretary, was sent to the Terrace, where he refused to allow several classes of med students to vote, claiming he did not have their lists and telling them they would have to vote in the Arts Block in Belfield. This was done so to ensure that the high turn-out needed by Abey Campbell in med would not occur. Campbell was guaranteed a large proportion of the med vote as he had the extremely popular incoming auditor of MedSoc, Matt O’Faolain, canvassing for him.

But the question remains as to why did the KBC invest so much time and effort into getting these people elected?

1.They wanted to stop Hourihane retaining power next year through his proxy, Woulfe. Aonghus will be in UCD as he will be doing a post-grad in social work. He has already lined himself up for a seat on the SU exec and UCD’s Governing Authority.

2.They also wanted to stop Abey Campbell getting elected as the hate him for ruining their chances of disaffiliation from USI. It didn’t matter that Dillon ran the no campaign, in the KBC’s eyes he was the best person to beat Campbell and that was all that mattered.

3.More than anything else however, was the deal done to ensure that the KBC got their girl into the welfare office. O’Neill’s decision not to run for DP was explicitly in return for the assurance that there would be no CFE welfare candidate. Jennifer Allen has been given the same mandate that current welfare officer in UCC Cait Mengan (former chair of UCC FF) got, namely to work to reverse the traditional SU position on abortion. Allen is a member of the national fund-raising committee of the “charity” Life. She is also the secretary of the FF “Women’s and equality forum” in Dun Laoghaire. Her job in the welfare office next year will be to subtlety change the Union’s policy from one of (pro-choice) non-directive counselling to one favoured by the right that provides “information” to women suffering from crisis pregnancy on the options available to them. This “information” involves the showing of graphic details of the process of aborting a foetus. CFE have done a deal that has allowed a right-wing, conservative, pro-life Fianna Failer to get control over the one office in the union that can actually have a huge impact on students lives. They have sold out their principles in return for their names above the doors of some meaningless offices. No doubt this was another lesson that Paul and Aidan learned in the KBC classes on how to fool the electorate into voting for you.