emotional politician. On the one hand he was a charmer, always capable of getting people on his side. On the other, however, Haughey was capable of being extremely rude and occasionally vulgar, regularly using foul language. Journalist Geraldine Kennedy recalled how ‘grown men would be terrified of him’.15 Martin O’Donoghue, Fianna Fáil minister during the late 1970s and early 1980s, noted with venom the extent to which Haughey was a ‘corrupting and coercive force’ within Fianna Fáil.16 Perhaps Frank Dunlop most accurately summoned up Haughey’s character when he wrote that ‘Charlie’s personality was impossible to fathom.’17 In truth, it depended on which Haughey you ran into on a particular day.
Sometimes Haughey’s emotionalism got the better of his judgement, whereby short-term political gains came at the expense of more long-term planning. This was certainly the case in the context of Haughey’s relationship with British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, during the 1980s, not merely when it came to Northern Ireland, but as is addressed later in this study, also during the Falklands War in 1982. The manipulative, often sly, side of Haughey’s personality had a direct impact on his policymaking process.
When it came to Northern Ireland, and more generally in the realm of Anglo-Irish affairs, Haughey was obsessed with retaining control over policy. He found it difficult to trust people. During his three periods as taoiseach he had a particular aversion to some of his own civil servants, principally those working within the Department of Foreign Affairs. In his eyes, Iveagh House officials, to quote one revealing source, were nothing more than ‘gin-swilling arrivistes with affected manners of speech and behaviour in whom he had very little confidence’.18 Apparently, Haughey once referred to the Department of Foreign Affairs mandarins as ‘dog handlers’.19
The fact that Haughey did not trust his own civil servants impacted greatly on his sometimes knee-jerk reaction to Northern Ireland policy. In the words of British ambassador to Ireland Robin Haydon (1976–80) Haughey was a politician that ‘holds his cards close to his chest’ and would ‘make up his own mind about the line to be taken’.20 Such an approach at times meant that Haughey could quite literally make policy decisions on the spot, with little foresight or strategic planning. In the tradition of previous Fianna Fáil taoisigh, Éamon de Valera, Seán Lemass, and to a lesser extent Jack Lynch, Haughey always sought to retain personal control over his government’s policy vis-à-vis Northern Ireland policy and Anglo-Irish relations, working within the Department of the Taoiseach. As a confidential memorandum from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office reported in 1980, on the subject of Northern Ireland, Haughey was ‘in personal control’.21 Officials would be consulted if necessary, but otherwise they should know their place.
Haughey’s general leadership style reflected his determination to retain personal control over Fianna Fáil’s Northern Ireland policy. In the words of Ronan Fanning, Haughey had an ‘autocratic ministerial style’.22 He had a habit of shadowing his ministers from various departments, always eager to have a say in policy decisions.23 David Neligan, a senior mandarin in the Department of Foreign Affairs during the 1980s subsequently noted that Haughey ‘disparaged mercilessly some of his own ministerial colleagues …’.24 No doubt, one of the main reasons why he appointed Brian Lenihan as minister for foreign affairs in his first cabinet was because he could control and manipulate his colleague; Lenihan was known to be ‘frightened’ of Haughey.25 Yet, the paradox of Haughey’s character and his appetite for work, as pointed out by Justin O’Brien, was that ‘the very skills that differentiated him also nurtured the seeds for his downfall’. In the end Haughey was incapable of ‘delegating power, interfered in the work of ministers and stored up resentment’.26
In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote of the qualities needed to become a successful leader: ‘a prince is successful when he fits his mode of proceeding to the times, and is unsuccessful when his mode of proceeding is no longer in tune with them.’27 When it came to the emotive subject of Northern Ireland, Haughey always tried, to varying degrees of success, to take the temperature of Fianna Fáil rank-and-file supporters. This was certainly evident during his involvement in the Arms Crisis and more generally during his presidency of Fianna Fáil. In reality, he was a product of his time, a politician full of contradictions.
In this respect, Haughey might, therefore, be labelled as Ireland’s version of American president Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon. Once banished to the political side-lines following allegations of helping to import guns into Ireland during the early 1970s, Haughey made an extraordinary comeback, rising to become leader of Ireland’s largest political party Fianna Fáil in 1979. However, like his American counterpart Nixon, Haughey’s years in government were dogged with controversy and scandal, until finally he was forced out of office in 1992, hounded by allegations of political duplicity.
In the final analysis, Haughey’s reputation will forever be tainted by accusations of corruption and financial irregularities. This was a man who over the course of his political career received payments approximating to more than eleven million in the form of so-called ‘political gifts’ and donations.28 The extent of Haughey’s unearned income was staggering. While he may not have been ‘corrupt’ in the strictest sense of the word, his actions were certainly shameful. Here was a man, taoiseach of his country on three separate occasions, who sought to avoid paying tax by holding substantial sums of monies in offshore Ansbacher accounts.29 In the last assessment the sheer scale and extent of payments that Haughey received can only be described as having ‘devalued the quality of national democracy’, to quote the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal.30 The tribunal’s revelations were indeed astounding. Haughey’s image was in tatters.
Chapter outline
As an introductory note, readers should be aware that this study is a chronological analysis of Haughey’s attitude to the Northern Ireland question. Chapter One examines the background to our subject’s attitude to Northern Ireland, tracing his family connection to Ulster, through to his period as a minister in consecutive Fianna Fáil governments during the early to mid-1960s. From an early age Haughey was immersed in Northern Ireland political and social discourse. His parents Seán and Sarah Haughey were both from the republican area of Swatragh Co. Derry. As a child, Haughey regularly visited Swatragh, spending time with relatives. In later life he recounted with pride that ‘my father and mother were born here…my people have lived here for a very long time’.31
During the 1930s, his family home in Donnycarney, Co. Dublin was a talking shop, with Northern Ireland politics the focus of much debate. Haughey’s visits to Northern Ireland and the stories that he heard from his parents had a deep psychological impact on his outlook towards the partition of his country and more generally his attitude to Anglo-Irish relations. As he noted in 1986: ‘I can never arrive [at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland] without experiencing deep feelings of anger and resentment … The border is nonsense.’32
As Haughey entered his late teenage years these childhood experiences naturally impacted on the development of his political thinking. In fact, his association with Northern Ireland during the formative years of his life was a blend of republican radicalism, Anglophobia and later ministerial pragmatism. As Chapter One explains, as an impressionable nineteen-year-old commerce student at University College Dublin (UCD), Haughey played a prominent role in the burning of a Union Jack outside the gates of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on VE Day, 8 May 1945. With a group of UCD students he reportedly helped to organise a march to TCD, with some of his supporters allegedly ‘bearing Nazi swastika flags’.33 This infamous incident was the first, but by no means last, public demonstration of Haughey’s instinctive anti-British feelings.
By the mid-1950s, as Haughey entered his early thirties, there was little indication that his youthful republicanism had waned. In 1955, in his capacity as honorary secretary of his local Fianna Fáil party branch, the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann, Dublin North-East, Haughey sent a memorandum on partition to the Fianna Fáil national executive. 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 unity34.
