Fionnán Sheahan

The Sunday Independent raised questions, but it wasn't going to fly.

It was an authoritarian era, mind your place, and he's the boss and that's that.

And by the way, that was his title, the boss.

Of all the leaders of Fianna Fáil, why did de Cahill command such enormous loyalty?

Was it that he was a brilliant figure?

Did it go back to the arms trial and how he was treated there, rightly or wrongly?

What was it about him that made him command such stern loyalty?

Just very briefly, he was unfairly treated.

We now know definitively that it was a government decision taken

to import those arms, and he was basically ratted out by Lynch and the others.

I am convinced I've read two books in the last couple of years which comprehensively argue that.

But to move to your question, how he was boxing off the ropes, more or less from the start.

He was elected in November 1979.

It was a backbench coup.

They were tired of Jack Lynch, even though 18 months earlier he had delivered a huge landslide.

They just felt the party and the country had become atrophied.

From very early on, Charlie was, as I say, in a corner fighting for survival.

He was quite brilliant at it, a lot of people would say.

Even more sympathetic biographers such as T. Royal Dwyer would argue, well, he was very good at boxing off the ropes, but why should he always be in that position?

He hadn't the confidence of a significant number of people in Fianna Fáil from very early on.