he said, should ‘go forward into the future with Britain in a spirit of mutual co-operation.’ In reference to Ireland’s past, but with his sights firmly focused on the future, he noted that Dublin and London had a responsibility to respect the history and traditions of one another and not to be afraid to challenge long-held stereotypes and misconceptions.149
During the Irish general election campaign of April 1965, Haughey and his ministerial colleagues continued to endorse the merits of European integration and to encourage further co-operation between Belfast and Dublin.150 By now Haughey’s influence over Fianna Fáil was steadily growing. He was Fianna Fáil’s national director of elections during this election campaign (and again at the 1969 general election) and heavily involved in revamping the party’s fund-raising capabilities.151 During the 1965 election campaign, Lemass felt particularly confident that his meetings with O’Neill would be viewed as a positive factor by the Irish electorate. However, as in previous elections, the economy, not Northern Ireland, dominated the election trail. When the election results were announced, on 13 April, Fianna Fáil won exactly half the seats, seventy-two, a gain of two seats. The result did not give Lemass the overall majority that he desperately wanted. The close result, as noted by John Horgan, suggests that without the Northern issue he might have been forced into another minority government.152 Despite the narrowness of the election victory, Fianna Fáil returned to government for the third successive occasion, with Haughey retaining his portfolio as minister for agriculture.
In June 1966, Lemass informed close friends of his intention to resign as taoiseach and Fianna Fáil president.153 After serving nine years as taoiseach and a further twenty-one years as a Fianna Fáil minister, Lemass, who was sixty-seven years old, had grown tired of the day-to-day hustle and bustle of political life. On 9 November of that year, he notified a gathering of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party of his intention to resign. He asked deputies to offer ‘no sympathetic speeches’.154 Lemass’s announcement left his cabinet colleagues shocked. Seán MacEntee was outraged by his leader’s decision. He could not believe that the taoiseach should ‘wash his hands of responsibility for the country’s affairs’.155 Frank Aiken was likewise upset. He recorded that he had tried his ‘utmost to persuade him [Lemass] to carry on at least for another few years’.156
Attention quickly turned to who would succeed Lemass. The choice ranged across a broad spectrum within Fianna Fáil. Haughey was believed to have a good chance, as was George Colley, Neil Blaney and Jack Lynch. Haughey, however, did have one major handicap in the ongoing farmers’ protests.157 It was believed that Lemass favoured Lynch as his successor, Colley his second. Initially, Lynch refused to be considered for the leadership, with the result that Colley and Haughey emerged as the early favourites. However, Blaney then threw a spanner in the works by announcing his intention to run.
The prospect of Haughey becoming Fianna Fáil president set off alarm bells among many of the old guard within Fianna Fáil. Again Aiken led the protests. He believed that under Lemass’s leadership Fianna Fáil had already become too cosy with big business. Aiken particularly disliked Fianna Fáil’s decision in 1966 to establish Taca, a fund-raising organisation of 500 businessmen, who each paid relatively large sums of monies and in return obtained privileged access to Fianna Fáil ministers and exclusive dinners in the Gresham Hotel, Dublin.158 Haughey, together with Brian Lenihan and Donogh O’Malley, the so-called ‘three musketeers’, embodied Fianna Fáil’s cosy relationship with the business world. Writing in 1965 (little doubt in reference to this new breed of ‘Mohair-suited Young Turks’ taking over Fianna Fáil) Gerald Boland noted that ‘Some of the young set make me actually sick and disgusted.’159 Indeed, privately Boland even went so far as to describe Brian Lenihan as ‘a shit’.160
In the eyes of men like Aiken and Boland, Taca was indicative of Fianna Fáil’s ‘moral collapse’.161 Many of the party stalwarts detested the idea of ministers aligning themselves with a ‘golden circle’ of builders, property developers and speculators, all of whom benefited greatly from the economic boom of the 1960s. Aiken was particularly concerned by accusations that some senior Fianna Fáil figures had abused planning laws, ‘with inside information lubricating the accumulation of substantial private fortunes’.162 Aiken believed that if Haughey secured the Fianna Fáil leadership, the organisation’s pathway to moral bankruptcy would be inevitable. Aiken’s concerns were no doubt alerted because of Haughey’s ability during this period to acquire considerable personal wealth without the apparent means to do so.
Aiken, therefore, announced his support for Colley in the leadership contest. He then tried his ‘utmost to persuade’ Lemass to carry on for another few years in order to allow Colley sufficient time to gain further ministerial experience and to raise his national profile.163 In many ways Colley was the complete opposite to Haughey. The former represented the traditional-wing of the party; he had a love of the Irish language and a reputation as a decent and honest politician. Haughey, on the other hand, was widely known for his love of money. He represented the brash, progressive and at times snobby, new breed of politician who had infiltrated Fianna Fáil during the 1960s.
The prospect that a leadership battle might lead to a split within the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party spurred Lemass to ask Lynch a second time if he would stand. After consulting his wife, Maureen, Lynch agreed. As soon as Lynch announced his intension to run for the leadership Haughey withdrew from the contest, as did Blaney. Encouraged by Aiken, Colley decided to remain in the contest. On 9 November 1966, the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party met to vote for the new president of the organisation. A vote was taken on Lemass’s successor so as to avoid, as the records of the meeting phrase it, ‘acrimonious discussions and intemperate statements that could cause unnecessary division in the party’.164
Aiken ‘spoke at length’ and said that ‘the decision they were to make that day would be a momentous one’. He told party members that he was ‘firmly convinced that George Colley had something to give the nation’ and objected to what he called the ‘tyranny of consensus’ through which attempts had been made to vote Lynch as Fianna Fáil leader.165 Despite Aiken’s protests in the end the contest between Lynch and Colley was a one-sided affair. When the votes were counted Lynch was declared as the new Fianna Fáil leader, beating his rival on a margin of fifty-two votes to nineteen. The following day, on the morning of 10 November 1966, Lemass announced to the Dáil chamber his resignation as taoiseach. He offered no fancy pretentious speech, but simply recorded with his customary fondness for brevity: ‘I have resigned.’166
In conclusion, with Lemass’s retirement, relations between Dublin and Belfast were at their most cordial since that of the Cumann na nGaedheal government’s dealings with Ulster Unionists during the early 1920s. However, the honeymoon period was to be short-lived. Unfortunately, old agendas and prejudices were to soon return. Whitaker, writing in the 1970s of Lemass’s visit to meet O’Neill in 1965, recalled with poignant accuracy how quickly the political landscape of the island of Ireland changed within the space of a few years: ‘We started back on the road to Dublin with new hope in our hearts. We had no presentiment of the tragic events to 1969 and the years since.’167
By the time of his appointment as minister for justice under the Lemass government in 1961, it seemed apparent that Haughey had replaced his youthful blend of Anglophobia and republicanism with a conciliatory attitude to the political forces of Ulster unionism in Belfast and the British government in London. The illusion, however, was shattered in 1969. As is analysed in the next chapter, the outbreak of the conflict in Northern Ireland in August of that year, was the moment when Haughey’s previously well-hidden, but deep-rooted, anti-partitionist views on Northern Ireland reappeared with dramatic consequences, not merely for his political career, but for the institutions of the Irish state.
CHAPTER TWO
‘We Can’t Stand By’:
Haughey,
