the war at an end Haughey’s attention quickly shifted to his employment prospects. Having ruled out a career in the Irish army he decided to put his commerce degree to best use. Following his graduation from UCD in 1946 he was articled to the accountancy firm Michael J. Bourke of Boland, Bourke and Company. In 1948 he won the John Mackie memorial prize of the Institute of Chartered Accountants (ICA). The following year, after studying at King’s Inns, he was called to the bar, but never practiced. He became an associate member of the ICA in 1949 and a fellow in 1955.42 It was towards the end of the 1940s, as his burgeoning career in the world of accountancy progressed, that Haughey’s interest with Irish politics and specifically with Fianna Fáil first surfaced. Although he had no traditional Fianna Fáil roots, through his friendship with two former classmates at St Joseph’s, Harry Boland (with whom he established a successful accountancy practice, Haughey and Boland in 1951) and George Colley, that Haughey’s political career first began.
Shortly before his passing in 2006, Haughey recalled with some amusement that his involvement in politics was ‘accidental’. He noted that he fell into politics through his close friendship with Boland and Colley. ‘It was as simple as that,’ he said.43 Haughey’s reluctance to join Fianna Fáil prior to this period may have also stemmed from not wishing to upset his father, who was known to have ‘despised’ Éamon de Valera.44 Following the death of his father in 1948, however, Haughey was convinced by Boland and Colley to join them in the Fianna Fáil Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann, Dublin North-East.45 Haughey was an active member of cumann affairs from the start. With other young members he became involved in the writing of a pamphlet, Fírinne Fáil, on Fianna Fáil policy and outlook.46 In September 1951, he cemented his links with Fianna Fáil, following his marriage to Maureen Lemass, the eldest daughter of Seán Lemass, a co-founder of the organisation.
Haughey’s rising fortunes as an emerging protégé within Fianna Fáil, coupled with being the son-in-law of the second most powerful man in the party, did not, however, ensure his immediate breakthrough into national politics. At the 1951 Irish general election and again in 1954, he unsuccessfully ran as a Fianna Fáil candidate in Dublin North-Central. In 1953, he was, however, co-opted onto the Dublin Corporation; although he had to suffer the ignominy of losing his seat on the Corporation in the local government elections in 1955. Despite numerous disappointments on the national stage, by 1954, Haughey, now twenty-nine years old, had steadily climbed the Fianna Fáil ladder in his own constituency of Dublin North-East, securing the position as honorary secretary of the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann and also honorary secretary of the Dublin Comhairle Dáilceanntair.47
‘Guerrilla warfare’: the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann memorandum on partition, 1955
It was Haughey’s prominent role with the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann that exposed the true extent of his visceral anti-partitionism.48 In January 1955, in his capacity as honorary secretary of the Ó Cléirigh cumann, Haughey sent a memorandum devoted to the subject of partition to Fianna Fáil headquarters.49 A six-page typed document, the Ó Cléirigh memorandum on partition offered an aggressive case as to why Fianna Fáil should use physical force to secure Irish unity.50 If it had been made public, its contents would have proved highly controversial. It was produced in response to Seán Lemass’s determination to revitalise the Fianna Fáil organisation following the party’s general election defeat in May 1954, and in the context of the renewed IRA activity along the North–South border during this period.
After the 1954 election which resulted in Fianna Fáil’s relegation to the opposition benches, Lemass was appointed as the party’s national organiser. He led a team with responsibility for formulating and developing new policy initiatives, pruning the organisation of any dead wood and listening to what policy areas truly mattered to grass-roots members.51 As part of this consultative process between September 1954 and January of the following year, Lemass contacted every registered Fianna Fáil cumann throughout the Irish Republic, requesting they submit any views that its members had on either local or national issues.52 It was in response to this request that on 15 January 1955, Haughey sent the aforementioned memorandum to the Fianna Fáil national executive.
Besides Haughey, the Ó Cléirigh cumann contained several influential Fianna Fáil members: Cork-man, senator Seán O’Donovan (chairman of the cumann); George Colley, a future deputy leader of the party; his father Harry Colley, TD for Dublin North-East; Oscar Traynor, also a TD for Dublin North-East; and Harry Boland, brother of Kevin Boland and son to Gerald Boland.53 Unfortunately, the Ó Cléirigh memorandum is not signed, therefore one will never be able to state definitively that Haughey wrote or co-wrote it. Nonetheless, the fact that it was written in the plural, suggests that its contents represent the collective viewpoint of the members of the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann.54
The very fact that Haughey, in his capacity as honorary secretary of the Ó Cléirigh cumann, sent the memorandum directly to the Fianna Fáil national executive reinforces the argument that he most likely endorsed its contents.55 Moreover, the memorandum’s ‘military’ tone, focused on guerrilla warfare tactics, included attacks on key military and strategic installations in Northern Ireland, which adds weight to the argument that Haughey had a part to play in its formation. At this time he was a FCÁ officer, commanding ‘A’ company, North Dublin battalion. Over the previous several years, initially in the LDF and later the FCÁ, he had amassed a wealth of military knowledge, an unusual trait for the time.
Oral testimonies also provide circumstantial evidence to support the claim that Haughey played a role in the formulation of the Ó Cléirigh memorandum. Although Haughey’s son, Seán Haughey, remains adamant that ‘there is nothing to suggest’ that his father contributed to the Ó Cléirigh memorandum, there is contrary evidence to suggest otherwise. In correspondence with this author, Seán Haughey stated that there is no copy of the Ó Cléirigh memorandum on partition in the private papers of Charles J. Haughey. He instead suggested that George Colley was the possible author.56 Two former members of the Ó Cléirigh cumann, however, disagree with Seán Haughey’s claim.
In a 2008 interview Harry Boland, a member of Ó Cléirigh cumann during the period in question, said he would be ‘very surprised’ if Haughey did not produce the Ó Cléirigh memorandum. He explained that Haughey and Colley worked closely with one another and although he could not recall the memorandum in question, both men were in charge of policy development.57 Mary Colley, wife to George Colley, was ‘convinced’ that Haughey and her husband devised the Ó Cléirigh memorandum. In a 2009 interview she recalled that the two men would spend hours together discussing Northern Ireland, and she remembered that Haughey came to her home on several occasions during late 1954 and early 1955, where, she believed, he and Colley formulated the memorandum.58
The Ó Cléirigh memorandum was produced in the aftermath of the 1954 Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, held in October of that year. The catalyst was Éamon de Valera’s public acknowledgement during his presidential address that without the consent of Ulster unionists he was unable to offer any credible solution for ending partition.59 Furthermore, the Fianna Fáil leader categorically rejected the use of force to secure Irish unity.60 To the amazement (and disgust) of some of those present, he admitted that he did not think it ‘is possible to point out steps’ that would ‘inevitably lead to the end of partition’.61 He went as far as to inform Fianna Fáil delegates that ‘our efforts to make for a solution of that sort have come to nought’.62
De Valera’s speech, as reported by the Irish Times, did not have the support of a number of ‘wild men’ within Fianna Fáil.63 Harry Boland, who was in attendance during the 1954 Ard Fheis, recalled that ‘many young folks within Fianna Fáil had become disillusioned’ because so little progress was being made to end partition. He remembered that at this Ard Fheis a cohort of delegates, particularly those of a younger age, openly expressed their frustration at the lack of action on partition from the Fianna Fáil hierarchy.64 Boland remarked that along with Haughey and Colley, he felt that ‘nothing was happening on the North’ and that the time had arrived to initiate a fresh approach to partition.65 Indeed, the previous September
