1984 Revisited: The dystopian predictions largely failed to materialise...

Mon, 01 Jan, 2024 - 15:00

Colin Sheridan

"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past” — George Orwell, '1984'

Imagine waking up and realising you’ve been teleported back to 1984. A cranky old man, a former Hollywood star, no less, is president of the United States. Garret Fitzgerald is Taoiseach.

Eoin Hand is manager of our national soccer team and Kerry and Cork are All-Ireland football and hurling champions. Stevie Wonder was just calling to say he loved us in the charts, and Big Arnie was terrifying us as a muscle-bound, monosyllabic robot.

This is part of the Irish Examiner's 1984 series which is going online this week from Monday, January 1. The series is also published in the Irish Examiner in print and ePaper from Tuesday.

Samantha Fox was a regular on page 3, and most of us, if we were lucky, were driving Ford Cortinas, and, if we were unlucky, Ladas.

Liverpool won the English league and Everton won the cup. Cabbage Patch Kids were the most delivered toy by Santa Claus, and Apple’s first Macintosh computer went on sale, priced at $2,500. Everyone was smoking cigarettes and most people (the conscientious ones at least) were stopping after four pints to make sure they could drive safely home.

Hello: Apple’s first Macintosh computer went on sale in 1984 priced at $2,500 in the United States.

As a year, there was a lot of pressure on it. That’s what happens when one of the greatest authors of the 20th century names his book after you. And not just any book, but an epic novel about a dystopian future where the thought police surveil and punish thoughtcrime.

George Orwell published his 1984 in 1949, choosing the title year intentionally to give “an immediacy and urgency to the menace of totalitarian rule”. Come to think of it, the bar was pretty low for success.

Then Labour leader Dick Spring, Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, Fine Gael leader and then taoiseach Garret Fitzgerald, and SDLP leader John Hume pictured in 1984 at the first meeting of the Northern Ireland Forum in Dublin. Picture: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall

In Ireland, the year started ominously, as Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old schoolgirl from Granard, Co Longford, died giving birth beside a grotto in late January.

Her baby son died alongside her, and their deaths played a huge part in a seminal national debate on women giving birth outside marriage.

In the weeks after her death, hundreds of Irish women wrote to Late Late Show host Gay Byrne outlining the devastating impact of their own secret pregnancies, some of which were a result of sexual abuse, incest, or rape. Byrne used his morning radio show to read the letters to a stunned nation.

On June 4, the day Ronald Reagan addressed the joint houses of the Oireachtas, Bruce Springsteen dropped his landmark 'Born in the USA' album.

In Belfast, Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams was shot and wounded when his car was riddled with bullets. The outlawed Loyalist group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, admitted carrying out the attack.

In October, the IRA attempted to assassinate members of the British conservative government at the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Patrick Magee planted the bomb that exploded, killing five people, including the Conservative MP and deputy chief whip Anthony Berry. A further 31 people were injured. Thatcher narrowly escaped the explosion.

In total, 69 people were killed in The Troubles that year, including 22 civilians.

Samantha Fox was a regular 'page three girl' in the 1980s.

On June 4 — the same day that Bruce Springsteen dropped his defiant Born in the USA album — US president Ronald Reagan addressed the joint houses of the Oireachtas, an honour only once previously accorded, to JFK, 21 years earlier.

During his five-day visit, Reagan also visited his ancestral home of Ballyporeen, Co Tipperary the previous day, June 3.

His visit was met with much opposition and protest led by public figures such as senator Michael D Higgins, Dr Noel Brown, Sean MacBride, and Sister Stanislaus, regarding his administration’s policies of interference and influence in Central America.

Santy delivered more Cabbage Patch Kids than any other toy in 1984. Picture: Jane Mingay/PA

Reagan, like the current US president, Joe Biden, was renowned for his on-air gaffes. In late summer, during a voice check for a radio broadcast, he remarked: “My fellow Americans, I’m pleased to tell you today that I’ve signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.”

This joke was not broadcast live, but was recorded and later leaked to the public. Despite being under intense scrutiny for his health and foreign policy, Reagan guaranteed himself a second term by defeating democratic challenger Walter Mondale in a landslide victory.

There are some names that have become synonymous with bravery in Irish life, and Mary Manning is one of them. A shop worker in the Henry St, Dublin outlet of Dunnes Stores, she refused to handle the sale of grapefruit from South Africa.

Mary Manning and Catherine O'Reilly among the Dunnes Stores workers on strike in 1985. Picture: RollingNews

Her union, IDATU, had issued directions to its members not to handle South African produce in protest of the country’s apartheid policies. When Ms Manning and shop steward Karen Gearon continued to refuse to the produce, they were suspended. Another 10 union members working in the shop joined them on the strike, which lasted almost three years.

In India, prime minister Indira Priyadarshini Gandhi was assassinated by her two bodyguards, a killing that plunged the country into yet another crisis, and provoked anti-Sikh riots which led to the death of between 5,000 to 15,000 Sikhs in India.

Worse was to come for the country when a chemical leak in the city of Bhopal evolved into one of the largest industrial disasters in history. The final death toll is believed to be 15,000 to 20,000 people, with some half a million survivors suffering respiratory problems, eye irritation or blindness, and other maladies resulting from exposure to the toxic gas.

In happier news, the Irish Licensed Vintners Association voted to abolish the holy hour in pubs and hotels in Dublin and Cork which closed for one hour between 2.30pm and 3.30pm. The hour was introduced in the 1920s by Minister for Justice Kevin O’Higgins.

All in all, 1984 didn’t quite reach the bleak, dystopian depths Orwell had so fantastically predicted. Despite the Russian boycott of the Los Angeles Olympic Games, there were signs that the Cold War between East and West was finally thawing.

Back home, the tragedy of the Lovett case forced much-needed oxygen into the conversation around teenage pregnancies and women’s reproductive rights.

In the Middle East, Lebanon especially remained a tinderbox, perpetually on the verge of detonating. As the year drew to a close, Bob Geldof and friends recorded the Christmas single ‘Do They Know It’s Christmas?’ in aid of the starving people of Ethiopia.

The more things change...

A timeline of events in 1984

January 1: The Department of Posts and Telegraphs is split into An Post and Telecom Éireann.

January 3: Michael Mills becomes Ireland’s first ombudsman.

January 10: Former tánaiste Seán MacEntee, 94, last surviving member of first Dáil, dies.

January 17: Closure of Ford Motor Plant in Cork announced.

January 30: Singer Luke Kelly of The Dubliners dies.

January 31: Ann Lovett, 15, dies after giving birth to a baby boy in Granard, Co Longford.

February 3: Former master of the High Court Patrick Lindsay, loses a libel action against TJ Maher MEP.

February 20: Tánaiste Dick Spring announces a government embargo on meeting members of provisional Sinn Féin.

March 5: Youghal Carpets announces the closure of its factory in April, with the loss of 106 jobs.

Neill Kelleher, Mike O'Donovan, and Con Scuffins at Youghal Carpets. The plant closed with the loss of 106 jobs in March, 1984.

March 12: Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald meets UN secretary general Perez de Cuellar in New York.

March 14: Sinn Féin MP Gerry Adams is shot in Belfast.

The scene at Wellington Place in Belfast after Gerry Adams MP was shot on March 14, 1984. The three UFF gunmen were captured, one of whom was injured. Picture: Pacemaker

March 15: Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald addresses joint houses of US Congress.

Garret FitzGerald addressed a joint sitting of the US houses of Congress. Picture: Pacemaker

March 16: Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald meets US president Ronald Reagan in White House.

March 18: INLA man Dominic McGlinchey extradited to the North after his arrest in Clare on March 17.

April 1: Pilot Arthur Wignall dies when his plane crashes on a Sligo beach during an air show.

April 9: Magistrate Tom Travers and his daughter, Mary, murdered by IRA after Mass in Belfast.

April 14: Baby’s body found on Kerry beach, which later led to Kerry Babies Tribunal.

April 17: Waterford Glass Company offered for sale.

April 18: Des O’Malley expelled from Fianna Fáil.

May 2: New Ireland Forum Report published.

May 5: Ireland’s Linda Martin finished second in Eurovision song contest.

June 1: US president Ronald Reagan arrives in Shannon Airport at start of four-day state visit.

June 2: Ronald Reagan visits Galway, Ballyporeen, and Phoenix Park.

June 3: 10,000 people protested outside state banquet for President Reagan at Dublin Castle.

June 4: Ronald Reagan addressed a joint session of the houses of the Oireachtas.

June 6: Secreto, trained by David O’Brien wins English Derby, beating odds-on favourite El Grand Senor — trained by his father Vincent O’Brien — in a photo finish.

June 14: European Parliament elections — and Brian Cowen is elected to the Dáil in the Laois-Offaly by-election caused by the death of his father.

July 4: Teacher Eileen Flynn loses circuit court appeal against dismissal.

July 7: Riot in Slane on eve of Bob Dylan concert.

July 14: Columban missionary Fr Niall O’Brien arrives in Dublin after release from jail in the Philippines.

Columban missionary Fr Niall O'Brien arrived home after his imprisonment in the Philippines.

July 17: Workers picket Dunnes Stores on Henry St, Dublin, in dispute over sale of South African produce.

July 19: Earthquake off east coast registers 5.5 on the Richter scale.

July 23: Dublin Area Rapid Transit (Dart) opened between Howth and Bray.

August 2: Food subsidies are halved.

August 10: Detective Garda Frank Hand, 27, murdered in Drumree, Co Meath.

August 12: John Treacy wins silver in Olympic marathon.

September 2: Cork defeat Offaly to win the All-Ireland hurling final.

September 12: ESB strike causes nationwide blackouts.

September 13: ESB strike called off.

September 18: Glasgow Rangers fans riot in Dublin after team lost 3-2 to Bohemians.

September 23: Kerry beat Dublin in All-Ireland football final.

September 27: The Marita Ann is seized off the Kerry coast with a consignment of arms for the IRA.

September 28: The Dublin telephone system collapses due to network overload, as a result of a phone-in competition on an illegal radio station.

October 1: Queen Elizabeth II awards royal charter to the University of Ulster.

October 5: Workers on strike at Dunnes Stores for 11 weeks, in support of a dispute over the handling of South African fruit, begin a sit-in at the Dublin store, October 9: Toddler Colin McStay has liver transplant in the US.

October 12: The IRA kills five in a bomb attack at Grand Hotel, Brighton, during the British Conservative Party’s annual conference and narrowly missing Margaret Thatcher.

October 21: Country’s first toll bridge opens on East Link Bridge, Dublin.

October 22: The Brother Edmund Ignatius Rice Bridge over River Suir opens to road traffic in Waterford.

November 5: RTÉ Radio current affairs programme Morning Ireland broadcasts for the first time.

November 8: Charles Mitchel retires as RTÉ newsreader after 24 years.

November 14: Irish Shipping Ltd is wound up owing over £100m.

November 19: Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald and British prime minister Margaret Thatcher meet at Chequers.

December 3: European Council begins two-day meeting in Dublin.

December 7: The most sophisticated naval vessel ever built in Ireland — the £25m LÉ Eithne — is commissioned at Haulbowline in Cork.

December 21: Closure of Atari plant in Limerick announced, with loss of 270 jobs.

December 28: Kerry Babies Tribunal opens.