ABSTRACT
At the four elections of the 1957–1969 period, Fianna Fail had been able to claim that the choice had been between itself and chaos. The outcome of the 1969 election, when an unpopular Fianna Fail government had been re-elected because of the refusal of the two opposition parties to offer an alternative, had led to much reflection within Labour, and especially within its parliamentary party, on the wisdom of its no-coalition policy. The opposition claimed that what bound Fianna Fail together was self-interest rather than principle, and that the party’s members were hanging together simply because they feared that otherwise they would be hanged separately. Fianna Fail, despite all its problems over the previous three years, actually gained first preference votes, while the combined coalition vote declined, a small advance for Fine Gael being outweighed by a decline in Labour’s share.
