It is this closeness, this understanding of the northern way of life that imbued his political thinking and nurtured his lifelong and deep-rooted republicanism. He was immensely proud of his northern background. Addressing Dáil Éireann in 1964, for instance, he proclaimed with gravitas: ‘I am a man of northern extraction!’16
It was Haughey’s love for Ulster and a wish to see Ireland united that instilled in him a lifelong antipathy for the Irish border, both in its physical and psychological existence. ‘The fact that my roots are here [in Derry]’, he said in the 1980s, ‘makes the whole border thing preposterous to me. I can never [arrive at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland], without experiencing deep feelings of anger and resentment’, the whole situation he felt was ‘nonsense’. He continued:
This border is only there for sixty years, it’s an artificial line that runs across and divides in two a country which has always been regarded as one, and which has always regarded itself as one. It runs through the main street of towns and villages and divides farmyards, even. It separates neighbour from neighbour.17
Haughey’s hatred for the partition of Ireland needs therefore to be understood within the context of his personal connections to Ulster. His father and mother and their respective families all resented having to live in Northern Ireland, which they believed to have been artificially created by the British government under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It was this sense of injustice that created and fed Haughey’s anti-partitionism. For the remainder of his lifetime he instinctively remained a vocal opponent of what he would later describe as the ‘failed political entity’ that was Northern Ireland.
Burning the Union Jack: the young Haughey and Northern Ireland, 1940s
By all accounts Haughey enjoyed his teenage years; academically he was diligent, while on the sports field he was fearless. During the early 1940s he represented the Leinster Colleges in hurling and Gaelic football. His notorious temper made an early appearance during this period when he was suspended for a year for striking a linesman while playing for Parnell’s GAA club. In 1943, on coming first in the Dublin Corporation scholarship examination, Haughey attended University College Dublin (UCD), where he studied commerce, graduating with an honours degree in 1946.18
Apart from a promising academic future, following in the footsteps of his father, Haughey also had his sights set on a possible military career. In September 1941, as the Second World War entered its third year and the threat of a foreign invasion increased, Haughey joined the Local Defence Forces (LDF), based in Collinstown battalion. He was platoon leader from November 1943 until he left the LDF in March 1946. In June of the following year he was commissioned in the Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCÁ),19 as 2nd lieutenant.20 In February 1953 he was promoted to lieutenant, eventually becoming officer commanding ‘A’ company, North Dublin battalion.21 During this period he gave serious consideration to pursuing an army career. However, he eventually resigned from his post in the FCÁ in 1957 on being elected as a TD.22
It was during these formative years that Haughey’s republicanism first boiled to the surface. On VE Day, 8 May 1945, he was notoriously involved in the burning of a Union Jack. The sequence of events leading to this incident is difficult to decipher, but a general picture can be pieced together. At 2pm the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) formally announced the Allied victory over Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich following the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Thousands of people lined the streets along Dublin’s main thoroughfares to celebrate the Allied victory. Trinity College Dublin (TCD) soon became the centre for ‘an impromptu celebration’.23
According to an account by the Irish Times at approximately 2.30pm, fifty to sixty students appeared on the roof of TCD’s main entrance, waving Union Jacks and singing ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘There’ll Always be an England’ and the French national anthem.24 By this juncture, the celebrations had attracted between 200–300 onlookers, with many people breaking into chorus, singing the British national anthem. The crowd around College Green increased further when TCD students hoisted three flags from the flag staff, in ascending order: a Union flag, a USSR flag and lastly a French flag.25 One eyewitness, Mr G.W. Chesson, described the atmosphere as being jovial, with the temper of the crowd said to have been ‘friendly’.26
By 3.15pm, however, the mood of the assembly darkened. ‘Booing and cat-calls’, now accompanied the singing.27 A section of the crowd took particular offence to the fact that when the three flags were re-hoisted the Irish Tricolour was placed at the bottom. Ernest A. Alton, provost of TCD, conceded privately at the time that there was ‘no doubt that an insult was offered to the tricolour’.28 In retaliation, at approximately 3.30pm, a number of youths arrived at College Green ‘from the direction of O’Connell Street’, carrying what was described as a Catholic Emancipation flag. Subsequently, one of the group climbed the tramway standards outside Messrs Fox’s Tobacconist Shop, ‘and tying a small Union Jack to the support-wire, proceeded to set it on fire and burn it, amidst howls of derision from the students on the College roof’.29
In response, according to Chesson’s account, a TCD student opened one of the windows in the front of the college and ‘thrust out a stick upon which were hanging three garments of lady’s underwear, coloured – green, white and orange’.30 A group of TCD students then took down the hoisted Irish Tricolour and attempted to set it on fire. Unable to set the flag on fire the TCD students ‘rolled it up and threw it down into the fore-court in front of the wicket gate of the College’.31 Immediately there was a rush of people who rescued the Irish flag.32
News of this fracas soon reached UCD students in Earlsfort Terrace. It was reportedly Haughey who organised a counter demonstration and led a march of UCD students, some allegedly ‘bearing Nazi swastika flags’, to TCD.33 According to Bruce Arnold, it was Haughey, along with a friend, Seamus Sorohan (law student and future barrister), who ripped down a Union Jack that was hanging on a lamp-post at the bottom of Grafton Street and proceeded to burn it.34 It was at this stage that ‘the attitude of the crowd became really ugly’,35 and some within the crowd, including several young women, reportedly made several attempts to break into TCD.36
The rioters rushed the front gates and made it through the main entrance, but were stopped by a large number of Civic Guards from ‘entering the College courtyard’. There were three or four baton charges before ‘the vicinity of the College was cleared’.37 Eventually, the Gardaí were forced to intervene, however, the melée continued towards the direction of the Wicklow Hotel, where several young men attacked the building, with cries of ‘Give us the West Britons’.38 It was further reported that a section of the crowd broke away and later stoned the residence of the British representative and the offices of the United States Consul-General. In total, twelve people were treated at Mercer’s Hospital for slight injuries.39
Haughey’s actions during this brief but memorable riot reflected a prevailing anti-British mood among many Irish people at the time; unlike the unscrupulous young Haughey, however, very few people would have actually been involved in burning a Union Jack. Although ‘neutral’ – Éire did not officially take part in the war effort – the country did suffer. Economically, Ireland was crippled by trade restrictions with the result that the country, as Haughey himself recounted, was effectively ‘down to subsistence level’.40 There was extensive unemployment and rationing, censorship of the press, private motor cars virtually vanished from the roads and sustained emigration.
Apart from blaming Éamon de Valera’s Fianna Fáil wartime administrations for their cultural, economic and social woes, many living in Ireland, including Haughey, vented their anger and frustration towards the British government in London. Indeed, in Ireland, under the banner of the IRA, there existed a small Republican fringe movement who hoped for a Nazi victory over the Allies, clinging to the worn-out idiom that ‘England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity.’ As on VE Day, such pervasive feelings of Anglophobia occasionally transfixed the Irish psyche. Indeed, Martin Mansergh later noted that during
