and tourist development;
6.To co-ordinate with the Six-County authorities in arrangements for Civil Defence, including movement of population from threatened areas in time of war;
7.To arrange, if possible, with the Six-County authorities for joint commercial and tourist publicity abroad, and to invite periodic consultation of all such matters of common interest;
8.To urge on the people of the Twenty-Six-counties the desirability of giving to the Six-County majority of such assurances as to their political and religious rights in a United Ireland as may reasonably be required, and as to the maintenance of local autonomy in respect of such matters as may be desired by them.94
Points one to three were consistent with current Fianna Fáil thinking on Northern Ireland and maintained that the ‘concurrence of wills’ philosophy was the only viable method available to the party to secure Irish unity; that Dublin must work in tangent with London and Belfast, via economic, cultural, political and social contacts, if partition was to be successfully ended.95 Points four to seven originated from Lemass’s personal views on the economic practicalities between North and South. Specifically, he believed that Fianna Fáil must agree to the lifting of tariffs between Dublin and Belfast, thus creating a free trade area on the island of Ireland.96
Lastly, point eight dealt with the thorny subject of making changes to the Irish Constitution in order to help accommodate Ulster unionists into a united Ireland, based on a federal agreement, namely, that a review of Article 44 of the Irish Constitution should be undertaken – this dealt with ‘the special position of the Catholic Church’. Additionally, the committee recommended that Articles 2 and 3, which claimed territorial jurisdiction over the whole of the island of Ireland, might be amended. Lemass was one of a few within Fianna Fáil to appreciate that the combination of Catholic social values and the territorial claim to the whole of the island, as enshrined in the 1937 Irish Constitution, had cemented the alienation of Ulster unionists over the previous two decades, thus entrenching partition.97
On 6 April 1955, Lemass sent de Valera the standing-committee’s memorandum and proposed that the national executive should endorse the recommendations as official Fianna Fáil Northern Ireland policy.98 Within twenty-four hours, however, de Valera rejected his lieutenant’s recommendation. In a letter to Lemass, dated 7 April, de Valera said that ‘whilst I agree a great deal of it does not seem to be open to serious objection, some of the steps suggested are not so, and are of more than doubtful value’. De Valera explained that the memorandum ‘... would certainly give rise to very serious controversy’ and would possibly add further confusion amongst ‘the nationalists of the Six-Counties’. He, therefore, informed Lemass that its contents must be ‘kept as a private norm. Publicity might in fact defeat the purpose of the scheme’.99
De Valera’s rejection of the memorandum was not altogether surprising. While he favoured a federal solution to help bring an end to partition he would have never signed up to the standing-committee’s recommendation that Fianna Fáil consider revising Articles 2 and 3. After all, de Valera was the main instigator of the 1937 Irish Constitution, which had in effect withdrawn the de facto recognition of the 1925 boundary agreement between the Dublin and Belfast governments, by asserting the thirty-two county national claim. More immediate concerns may have also instructed de Valera’s thinking. Following a recent spate of IRA violence, publication of the proposals would have left Fianna Fáil open to further criticism that it had abandoned its traditional republican pledge to secure a united Ireland.
Despite de Valera’s rejection of the proposals, the seeds of change had been sown. Lemass was to later acknowledge that the craft of policy development was a slow process that was ‘never born complete with arms and eyes and legs overnight. It’s something that grows over a long time’.100 In fact, the proposals contained within points four to eight, for instance, were ten years ahead of their time and were remarkably similar to the policies that Lemass advocated when he became Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach in 1959; a subject considered in further detail towards the end of this chapter.
There is no archival information available to ascertain Haughey’s attitude to the memorandum or indeed his general involvement on the standing-committee on partition matters. The fact that Lemass acknowledged that the memorandum had the support of all committee members suggests that Haughey towed the committee-line and gave his backing to the standing-committee’s recommendations. In reality, even if he did not agree with all of the proposals, he had little room to manoeuvre. Although by this period Haughey held a local corporation seat in Dublin, he was a marginal figure within the Fianna Fáil organisation at large. His contribution to the standing-committee, one can therefore argue, would have been curtailed by Lemass and the other elder statesmen such as Aiken, MacEntee and Moylan. In fact, by the time Haughey secured his first ministerial portfolio as minister for justice in 1961, he was widely believed to be a firm supporter of Taoiseach Lemass’s consolatory, economically inspired, Northern Ireland policy.
‘Nothing to fear in a united Ireland’: Lemass, Haughey and Northern Ireland, 1959–66
Haughey’s breakthrough into national politics eventually happened at the 1957 Irish general election when he was elected a Fianna Fáil TD for North-East Dublin. He was to retain this seat for the rest of his political career. His success came at the expense of Harry Colley, who lost his seat after thirteen years as Fianna Fáil TD. Colley’s election defeat accelerated the personal enmity between Haughey and George Colley, which steadily grew over the subsequent years. With Fianna Fáil back in government following three years in the political wilderness, Haughey learned his trade on the party’s backbenches.
The only apparent reference that Haughey made to Northern Ireland during his initial years as a backbencher TD came in the summer of 1957. During a debate in Dáil Éireann in July of that year regarding the commencement of the IRA border campaign (1956–62), he urged Independent TD for Roscommon Jack (John) McQuillan to point out what constitutional steps could help to deliver a united Ireland.101 Apart from this incursion Haughey rarely involved himself in the Northern Ireland question. In fact, his initial performance during the early years was unremarkable, fulfilling the role as a mere spectator in Dáil Éireann. Over time, however, he soon grasped the political nettle. In the mould of his father-in-law, Haughey concerned himself mostly with economic affairs. His contributions to debates were generally focused on the need for direct foreign investment, lower direct taxation and urban and rural redevelopments.
Éamon de Valera’s decision to retire as Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach two years later, in June 1959, was the indirect catalyst to Haughey’s political career. Upon de Valera’s announcement the spotlight immediately turned on who would replace him as Fianna Fáil president. Lemass was the obvious candidate. At fifty-eight years of age he was viewed as the most realistic and practical man in the government, with a sound grasp of economics. Indeed, the result of the succession race was never really in doubt, even if there was a little discontent among a select few deputies.102 After the furore of de Valera’s election as president of Ireland, the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party and the national executive gathered on 22 June 1959 to elect a new leader. Seán MacEntee duly proposed, and Frank Aiken seconded, Lemass as the second leader of Fianna Fáil.103 Soon after the national executive met to ratify the decision104 and the following day Lemass was officially elected taoiseach by the Dáil.
It did not take long for Haughey’s family connections with the most powerful man in the country to pay off. In May 1960, although apparently against Lemass’s advice to his son-in-law, Haughey was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister for justice, Oscar Traynor (Traynor was known to be unhappy about Haughey’s appointment).105 Haughey embraced his new role with the kind of energy that became characteristic of his political style. He soon gained a reputation as an able and confident speaker, a politician you could rely on for ‘getting things done’, as the British Embassy in Dublin subsequently recounted.106 Within the space of several months he introduced and steered through the Dáil, several pieces of legislations,
