Haughey’s attempts to paint a picture of himself as a politician happy to sit on the backbenches, content to serve his party in any way he could, the reality was that he cut a very depressing figure during this period. Marginalised within Fianna Fáil, he had lost his previous status as a prominent government minister and all the limelight and public adoration that went with such a high-profile job. At party level, he was even removed from the Fianna Fáil national executive. Haughey, however, was a fighter. He sought to turn his period in the political abyss to his advantage. Between 1970 and 1975 (before his reinstatement to the Fianna Fáil frontbench), in the words of the British Embassy in Dublin, Haughey slowly ‘managed to rehabilitate himself’.210
His wife Maureen later recalled that this time was ‘miserable’, however, Haughey, never considered giving up politics. ‘Politics is Charlie Haughey’s life,’ she proudly pronounced. ‘Even during the time when he was out of office after the arms trial,’ she recalled, ‘he never contemplated doing anything else.’211
During the early to mid-1970s, with a few close associates, Haughey assiduously groomed the Fianna Fáil grass-roots throughout the country on a ‘rubber chicken circuit’. In cars supplied by the Gallagher Group, Haughey travelled throughout Ireland, sometimes three or four evenings a week, to address local Fianna Fáil cumainn. It was on these visits that Haughey built up a loyal, hard-core, fan base among the Fianna Fáil faithful.212 The time and resources that he gave towards cultivating grass-roots support would play a crucial role in Haughey’s return to frontline politics. Indeed, at the 1972 Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis, Haughey was re-elected as one of party’s five honorary vice-presidents.
Haughey’s regular contacts with local Fianna Fáil supporters allowed him to capitalise on his continuing ambivalence regarding the conflict in Northern Ireland. As Pádraig Flynn later explained, during the wilderness years of the 1970s, Haughey promoted his image as ‘a good Republican’.213 Haughey’s trips around Ireland also permitted him to cultivate an image as a man of the people, someone who understood the needs and plights of the typical working-class Fianna Fáil member. The reality, however, was altogether different. Haughey appeared to be living the life of an eighteenth-century aristocrat rather than that of a backbencher TD, earning a relatively moderate salary. Astonishingly, in 1973 Haughey purchased Inishvickillane, an island off the Dingle peninsula in Co. Kerry. At great expense he built a holiday home on the island with building materials transported from the mainland by helicopter. Haughey’s extravagance did not end there. Native Irish red deer were brought to the island as part of a breeding programme, while efforts were also made to establish the white-tailed sea eagle there.214
Despite finally gaining control of Fianna Fáil’s Northern Ireland policy it was events outside Lynch’s control that again stirred up the ghosts of physical force nationalism. Although the British Conservative government, under prime minister Edward Heath strongly supported keeping the Northern Ireland prime minister, James Chichester-Clark, in office, by March 1971, the latter’s position was untenable. London sought to avert the prospect of direct rule, which would be the direct consequence of the collapse of the Stormont government, by propping up the Chichester-Clark regime. However, the murder of three British soldiers in Belfast on 10 March 1971 dealt the final blow to the Northern Ireland prime minister’s administration. Chichester-Clark resigned on 21 March. His replacement as Northern Ireland prime minister was Brian Faulkner, who despite being an extremely capable politician, was deeply mistrusted by Northern nationalists and the Fianna Fáil government in Dublin.215
By this point Northern Ireland appeared ready to errupt. In August 1971, Lynch received a personal message from Heath that the British government, willed on by Faulkner, intended to introduce internment without trial in Northern Ireland. ‘Operation Demetrius’ began in the early hours of 9 August when 464 people, mostly Catholics, were arrested in initial raids, with 342 being detained without trial. The deployment of internment was a grave blunder, which served only to heightened Catholic alienation from the Northern Ireland state.216
On 11 August, Haughey still lingering on the Fianna Fáil backbenches, issued an emotive public statement deploring the actions of the British government (and foreshadowing his thesis that Northern Ireland was a ‘failed political entity’) said that an internal solution to the conflict was not possible. This was to be Haughey’s last known public statement in relation to Northern Ireland prior to the 1973 Irish general election. He pronounced that ‘every day it becomes clearer that the cynical experiment of partitioning Ireland has ended in total, tragic failure’. He described the introduction of internment as unleashing a wave of ‘terror’ throughout Northern Ireland. The British army, he implored, was ‘no longer a peace-keeping force’, having lost the confidence of ‘a large section’ of the Northern Ireland community. He therefore called for the introduction of a UN peace-keeping force.217
Haughey’s speech did little to calm the situation. Northern Ireland was in the midst of chaos, with reportedly 4,339 people from the North taking refuge in the South. A special train had brought women and children from Belfast to Dublin, while many took refuge in temporary housing supplied by the Irish army.218 Lynch attempted to clarify his government’s position. On 12 August he issued a public statement condemning the actions of the Ulster Unionist government and the British decision to introduce internment. Significantly, his speech explicitly demanded the abolition of the Northern Ireland government. ‘The Stormont regime,’ he said, ‘which has consistently repressed the non-Unionist population and bears responsibility for recurring violence in the Northern community, must be brought to an end.’ In its place, foreshadowing a central component of the Sunningdale Agreement of 1973, he called for the creation of a power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland between Unionists and Nationalists.219
This was a bold speech. Lynch had shifted government policy from national unity to an agreed power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland. The Irish Times reported as significant that Lynch, as head of the Irish government, had made a ‘full frontal attack on the elective representatives of the Northern State’.220 In one brave swoop Lynch rejected the aspirations of the Downing Street Declaration of August 1969, in which London and Belfast had committed themselves to the fair and equal treatment for all citizens of Northern Ireland. Simultaneously, his condemnation of the Stormont regime meant that the Fianna Fáil government’s long-term policy of cross-border co-operation between North and South was effectively dead.221
Lynch also appealed to London to permit Dublin a voice in the affairs of Northern Ireland. In a telegram to Heath on 20 August, Lynch requested a meeting ‘of all the interested parties designed to find ways and means of promoting the economic, social and political wellbeing of all the Irish people North and South...’.222 Initially, Heath firmly rebuffed Lynch’s request to permit Dublin’s involvement ‘in the affairs of the United Kingdom’.223 Nevertheless, realising the error of internment, in early September 1971, Heath invited Lynch to a two-day summit to discuss Northern Ireland at the official residence of the British prime ministers at Chequers.
Given the fiasco of internment, Lynch worried that he might face criticism from the nationalist community North and South of the border if he took up the British prime minister’s offer. Nonetheless, Lynch disregarded the possibility of protests, realising that Heath was, in effect, recognising the Irish government’s legitimate right to discuss Northern Ireland. Lynch did not need to worry; members of the Fianna Fáil national executive, for example, offered Lynch their ‘full support’.224
The Chequers summit marked a milestone in Anglo-Irish relations. Lynch spoke of his commitment, and that of the Irish people, to a peaceful policy to the attainment of a united Ireland. Support for the PIRA, he said, could only be diminished if political initiatives were put in place and all internees released.225 In reality, the summit did not produce any dramatic breakthrough on Northern Ireland. But like Lemass’s visit to Belfast to meet Terence O’Neill in 1965, the fact that it happened was significant in itself. The summit was followed shortly afterwards by a tripartite summit, which also included Faulkner, at Chequers on 27 September 1971. This was the first meeting between
