BrowneSeptember 2016
Introduction
‘This border is ... 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. This border is economic, social and geographic nonsense.’
[Charles J. Haughey, circa 1986]1
Study overview: A failed political entity
Charles J. Haughey’s presidential speech at the 1980 Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis will forever be remembered for his infamous catchphrase that Northern Ireland as a political entity had ‘failed’. In dramatic fashion, the Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach tore apart his predecessor Jack Lynch’s traditional support for an internal power-sharing assembly for Northern Ireland as a prerequisite to a united Ireland. Instead, Haughey offered his own solution to the Northern Ireland conflict – a solution that showed breath-taking antipathy for the Northern Ireland state and its institutions.
In this speech, Haughey argued that Northern Ireland was a failed state, economically and politically. He stated that the British government must recognise the Irish government’s legitimate right to play a role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. The taoiseach envisaged that this new chapter in Anglo-Irish relations would be facilitated via a so-called ‘intergovernmental relationship’, whereby the two sovereign governments in Dublin and London would come together to negotiate a political settlement to the Northern Ireland conflict.2
Haughey’s dictum that Northern Ireland was a ‘failed political entity’ became the hallmark of his stance on partition until his retirement in 1992. In his interviews and speeches during this period he regularly used this argument to oppose various British government-sponsored political initiatives for the establishment of a power-sharing, devolved, government in Northern Ireland.3 Only a unitary, thirty-two county Irish Republic, he maintained, would satisfy the aspirations of nationalist Ireland. His refusal to consider an ‘internal’ solution to help end the violence in Northern Ireland, even on an intermediate basis, fostered his image as the ‘bogeyman’ of Ulster Unionism. Haughey, however, cared little about upsetting Protestant sensibilities. It was their responsibility, he arrogantly reasoned, to fit into his vision of a newly constituted united Ireland.
It should, therefore, come as no surprise to learn that Haughey wholeheartedly opposed the Irish government’s support for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Although he played a critical role in helping to kick-start the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process during the late 1980s and early 1990s, ultimately, he was disgusted by the political settlement that was reached under the terms of the Agreement. Echoing his traditional cries that Northern Ireland was a failed political entity, privately he allegedly ridiculed the Agreement as ‘inherently unstable, an unstable settlement in which the Provisional IRA [Irish Republican Army] demonstrates its willingness only to protect the nationalists within a failed state’.4
How did Haughey arrive at this fatalistic attitude to the Good Friday Agreement? There is no easy answer, not least because of the innate difficulty in unravelling the motivations behind his attitude to Northern Ireland over the course of his lifetime. In truth, Haughey presents the historian with a dilemma – what to believe? This is particularly true when assessing his stance on Northern Ireland. Did Haughey harbour a lifelong passion for a united Ireland, or did he merely use the emotive subject of partition as an electoral tool in the pursuit and maintenance of his political career?
This book answers these questions and other unresolved queries regarding the evolution of Haughey’s private and public position on Northern Ireland during his time in mainstream politics. It also offers readers a unique insight into Haughey’s attitude towards Anglo-Irish relations in so far as understanding and explaining his enduring disgust for the ‘preposterous’ existence of partition and the ‘artificial’ state of Northern Ireland.5
A political profile: Charles J. Haughey
Who was Haughey? How did his personality impact on his political thinking in relation to Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations? Such questions remain extremely difficult to answer and in truth, Haughey was – and remains – an enigma.
Although there are difficulties in assessing Haughey’s character, several observations can be made with confidence. He was arguably the most controversial and brilliant politician of his generation. He was arrogant, overambitious and quite often ruthless, and in the words of his one-time political protégé, Bertie Ahern, Haughey ‘didn’t tolerate fools easy’.6 He certainly held a Napoleonic vision of his place in Irish history, as Charlie McCreevy was to later sardonically pronounce: ‘He [Haughey] was smarter than everyone else, he was better than everyone else.’7 Haughey was also ahead of his time in appreciating the ‘value of image building’.8 For someone who never quite trusted the media he was obsessed with his personal public relations operations, which was always geared towards enhancing the public’s perception of his abilities, real or perceived.
Haughey was a politician who, in the words of a less than sympathetic Henry Patterson, blended the Renaissance prince and the Gaelic chieftain into one, a man that ‘did not regard himself as bound by the conventional values that applied to ordinary mortals’.9 Although Haughey came from humble beginnings, growing up on a council estate on Dublin’s north side, by the time he became taoiseach in 1979, he was living the life of an eighteenth-century aristocrat. He owned a large mansion in Abbeville, north Co. Dublin, a stud farm at Ashbourne in Co. Meath, and an island, Inishvickillane, off Co. Kerry. He had a fondness for fine clothes, especially £700 Charvet shirts from Paris, and was a known connoisseur of wines. He regularly went fox hunting and kept a Dublin gossip columnist, Terry Keane, as his long-term mistress.10
To balance these defects, Haughey was also clearly one of the brightest politicians to have ever entered Dáil Éireann, with a masterly understanding of his brief in each department that he served. As Professor Richard Conroy pointed out, Haughey was ‘an exceptionally intelligent individual, head and shoulders above his contemporaries … While he had many flaws he had an ability to take on new ideas at an early stage’.11 Indeed, Haughey had an unquenchable thirst for work and expected others to follow his example. In the words of The Times, Haughey had ‘qualities of clarity and imagination’ that made him stand out among his peers.12
Haughey had a certain charisma, which only added to his enigma. More often than not he was a first-class political strategist, adept at understanding the pulse of his followers within Fianna Fáil. Michael Lillis, who briefly acted as Haughey’s private secretary in the Department of Finance in 1967, remembered that his minister was ‘extraordinarily hardworking … most impressive and exceptionally intelligent’. Haughey, Lillis noted, was ‘practical, a decision-maker … who when he had made decisions was not afraid to then implement them’.13 The facts speak for themselves. In his capacity as minister in several Fianna Fáil governments, Haughey is credited for an array of bold initiatives, including bringing in succession rights for widows, free travel for pensioners and tax exemptions for artists.
J.J. Lee, albeit writing before the true extent of Haughey’s financial misdemeanours came to light, pointed out the positive features of the latter’s character:
He [Haughey] had abundant flair and imagination, immense public-self-control, an ability to cut through red tape with incisiveness that infuriated those wedded to the corruption of bureaucratic mediocrity, and an energy capable of sustaining his insatiable appetite for power.14
Whilst such an assessment may represent a fair description of the public face of Haughey, what of his private character? Having read many
