feelings reignited’.92 It would be misleading not to agree that political ambition was a motivating, if not central, factor in Haughey’s thinking during this period. However – and this is an important point – his actions were also motivated by a genuine and hitherto unrecognised deep-rooted commitment to a united Ireland. As Henry Patterson correctly explained, ‘For Haughey, the events of August 1969 produced a powerful confluence of ideological affinity and political ambition.’93
A further significant gap in the historiography of Haughey’s involvement with Northern Ireland, centres on his undervalued role in the genesis of the Northern Ireland peace process. In fact, apart from the seminal studies by Ed Moloney94 and Eamonn Mallie and David McKittrick,95 respectively, Haughey’s contribution to the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process during the late 1980s and early 1990s has all but been ignored.96 Haughey’s biographers97 and more general studies related to the history of Fianna Fáil98 have, likewise, glossed over his integral role in helping to bring the gun out of Irish politics. Haughey’s decision during his retirement to generally refrain from speaking about his role vis-à-vis the Northern Ireland peace process has also played a part in distorting the historical facts. As he later explained: ‘The stage is already overcrowded with people attempting to claim credit.’99 Again, this work readdresses this imbalance, offering readers a fresh interpretation of Haughey’s public and private role in the embryonic stages of the Northern Ireland peace process.
Conclusion
Writing in the Irish Times in the immediate aftermath of Haughey’s shock resignation as taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader in late 1992, Frank Millar aptly described Haughey’s attitude to Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations. ‘Charles Haughey,’ Millar wrote, ‘will at least go down in history as the man who most wanted to have a profound effect on Anglo-Irish relations.’ Millar continued: ‘he [Haughey] was that rare creature in southern Irish politics – a man with an abiding interest in the North. Whatever about his views he at least had a keen sense of the place.’100 Millar had indeed got to the very essence of Haughey’s feelings towards Northern Ireland and his lifelong aversion to the partition of his beloved country.
Addressing the assembled media on his appointment as Fianna Fáil leader in December 1979, Haughey was asked by one journalist about his dismissal as a government minister in 1970 and his time in the ‘political wilderness’. ‘They are very much now a matter for history. I’m leaving them to the historian,’ was Haughey’s reply.101 Well, the time has now arrived for the historian to do his job. On the emotive subject of Northern Ireland this book brings to life many of Haughey’s hidden skeletons. It deconstructs the myths and picks apart the historical inaccuracies and simplifications when assessing his stance on Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations.
CHAPTER ONE
‘I Am a Man of Northern Extraction’: The Genesis of Haughey’s Attitude to Northern Ireland, 1945–1966
‘When I talk about Ireland I am talking about something that is not yet a reality, it is a dream that has not yet been fulfilled.’
[Charles J. Haughey, circa 1986]1
‘My ancestral home’: Haughey’s Ulster background
The origins of Charles J. Haughey’s lifelong disgust at the partition of Ireland must be understood within the context of his Ulster background. Haughey was born in Castlebar, Co. Mayo on 16 September 1925. He was the third son of Seán Haughey, a commissioned officer in the Free State Irish army and his wife Sarah, whose maiden name was McWilliams. Haughey had three brothers, Pádraig (Jock), Seán and Eoghan and three sisters, Bride, Maureen and Eithne.
Haughey’s parents were not originally from Co. Mayo but from across the recently constituted north-south border, from the republican area of Swatragh in Co. Derry, Northern Ireland. His parents’ families had lived in the vicinity of Swatragh for generations, also referred to as ‘Fenian Swatragh’, according to Fr Eoghan Haughey, Charles Haughey’s older brother.2 Haughey was particularly proud of his association with Swatragh. ‘Swatragh’ was as he put it, ‘my ancestral home.’3 On a visit to Derry in 1986, Haughey recalled with pride that: ‘My father and mother were born here…my people have lived here for a very long time.’4 In later life he would intermittently return to Derry, where he enjoyed ‘coming back to renew childhood associations and to be among my cousins’.5
His father, Seán, had joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1917 and was involved in the Irish War of Independence in Ulster. By 1921 he was brigade commandant of 4th brigade, 2nd Northern division of the IRA.6 In July 1922, as the Irish Civil War entered its darkest hour, Haughey joined the newly constituted Free State Irish army as a commissioned officer, commanding the 4th infantry battalion, western command, stationed at Castlebar, Co. Mayo.7 It was during the early stages of the Civil War that he was reputed to have smuggled a consignment of rifles from Donegal to Derry, on the orders of Michael Collins, commander-in-chief of the Free State army and chairman of the provisional government.8 Haughey’s mother Sarah was also involved in the Irish Revolutionary period, having been a member of Cumann na mBan during the War of Independence. Her family remained close to the IRA thereafter; her brother, Pat McWilliams, was interned during the Second World War in Northern Ireland.9
In 1928, Seán Haughey resigned from his post in the Irish army due to ill-health, joining the reserve of officers; he was finally discharged from the Irish military on 30 December 1938.10 Following his resignation he did not involve himself in politics on either side of the Irish border. Speaking in 2006, shortly before his death, however, Charles Haughey admitted that his father had been ‘a committed supporter of Cumann na nGaedheal’, and that he was ‘very [Michael] Collins’.11
In the wake of Seán Haughey’s resignation from the Irish army the family settled for a time in the northside suburb of Sutton, Co. Dublin, before moving to a 100-acre farm in Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath. The farm, however, could not be retained when Seán developed multiple sclerosis. In 1933, the Haughey family settled in a new corporation house in Donnycarney, on the corner of Belton Park Road and Belton Park in Dublin. During his school years, Charles Haughey was educated at the Christian Brothers’ primary school, Scoil Mhuire, in Marino and later St Joseph’s Christian Brothers’ Secondary School in Fairview.12
Throughout the 1930s, Haughey regularly visited Co. Derry, where he spent time living with his grandmother (during this period he briefly attended primary school at Corlecky near Swatragh). It was during these visits that he witnessed the sectarian riots of 1935 in Maghera, Co. Derry, and the heavy-handed approach of the Ulster Special Constabulary or the so-called ‘B Specials’.13 His family home in Donnycarney was a hive of activity during this period, with Northern Ireland politics the focus of much debate. Indeed, his parents are remembered for regularly keeping an ‘open house for friends and visitors from the North’.14
The fact that the Haugheys retained a strong interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland went against the general political trend of the period. The vast majority of people living in the south of Ireland never gave Northern Ireland more than a passing thought. Although many refused to admit as much in public, privately a perception prevailed amongst the Irish populace that Northern Ireland was a foreign, alien land. Haughey was only amongst a small percentage of his generation to truly appreciate the Northern Ireland situation and particularly the plight of the Catholic minority. In later life he would regularly recall with fondness how his family were ‘deeply embedded in the Northern Ireland situation’.15
The first-hand encounters that Haughey experienced as a child on his visits to Northern Ireland and the stories that he heard while listening to his parents, left a lasting impact on how he viewed the partition of his country and more generally
