Co. Mayo on 16 September 1925. He was the third son of Seán Haughey, a commissioned officer in the Free State Irish army and his wife Sarah, whose maiden name was McWilliams. Haughey had three brothers, Pádraig (Jock), Seán and Eoghan and three sisters, Bride, Maureen and Eithne.
Haughey’s parents were not originally from Co. Mayo but from across the recently constituted north-south border, from the republican area of Swatragh in Co. Derry, Northern Ireland. His parents’ families had lived in the vicinity of Swatragh for generations, also referred to as ‘Fenian Swatragh’, according to Fr Eoghan Haughey, Charles Haughey’s older brother.2 Haughey was particularly proud of his association with Swatragh. ‘Swatragh’ was as he put it, ‘my ancestral home.’3 On a visit to Derry in 1986, Haughey recalled with pride that: ‘My father and mother were born here…my people have lived here for a very long time.’4 In later life he would intermittently return to Derry, where he enjoyed ‘coming back to renew childhood associations and to be among my cousins’.5
His father, Seán, had joined the Irish Republican Army (IRA) in 1917 and was involved in the Irish War of Independence in Ulster. By 1921 he was brigade commandant of 4th brigade, 2nd Northern division of the IRA.6 In July 1922, as the Irish Civil War entered its darkest hour, Haughey joined the newly constituted Free State Irish army as a commissioned officer, commanding the 4th infantry battalion, western command, stationed at Castlebar, Co. Mayo.7 It was during the early stages of the Civil War that he was reputed to have smuggled a consignment of rifles from Donegal to Derry, on the orders of Michael Collins, commander-in-chief of the Free State army and chairman of the provisional government.8 Haughey’s mother Sarah was also involved in the Irish Revolutionary period, having been a member of Cumann na mBan during the War of Independence. Her family remained close to the IRA thereafter; her brother, Pat McWilliams, was interned during the Second World War in Northern Ireland.9
In 1928, Seán Haughey resigned from his post in the Irish army due to ill-health, joining the reserve of officers; he was finally discharged from the Irish military on 30 December 1938.10 Following his resignation he did not involve himself in politics on either side of the Irish border. Speaking in 2006, shortly before his death, however, Charles Haughey admitted that his father had been ‘a committed supporter of Cumann na nGaedheal’, and that he was ‘very [Michael] Collins’.11
In the wake of Seán Haughey’s resignation from the Irish army the family settled for a time in the northside suburb of Sutton, Co. Dublin, before moving to a 100-acre farm in Dunshaughlin, Co. Meath. The farm, however, could not be retained when Seán developed multiple sclerosis. In 1933, the Haughey family settled in a new corporation house in Donnycarney, on the corner of Belton Park Road and Belton Park in Dublin. During his school years, Charles Haughey was educated at the Christian Brothers’ primary school, Scoil Mhuire, in Marino and later St Joseph’s Christian Brothers’ Secondary School in Fairview.12
Throughout the 1930s, Haughey regularly visited Co. Derry, where he spent time living with his grandmother (during this period he briefly attended primary school at Corlecky near Swatragh). It was during these visits that he witnessed the sectarian riots of 1935 in Maghera, Co. Derry, and the heavy-handed approach of the Ulster Special Constabulary or the so-called ‘B Specials’.13 His family home in Donnycarney was a hive of activity during this period, with Northern Ireland politics the focus of much debate. Indeed, his parents are remembered for regularly keeping an ‘open house for friends and visitors from the North’.14
The fact that the Haugheys retained a strong interest in the affairs of Northern Ireland went against the general political trend of the period. The vast majority of people living in the south of Ireland never gave Northern Ireland more than a passing thought. Although many refused to admit as much in public, privately a perception prevailed amongst the Irish populace that Northern Ireland was a foreign, alien land. Haughey was only amongst a small percentage of his generation to truly appreciate the Northern Ireland situation and particularly the plight of the Catholic minority. In later life he would regularly recall with fondness how his family were ‘deeply embedded in the Northern Ireland situation’.15
The first-hand encounters that Haughey experienced as a child on his visits to Northern Ireland and the stories that he heard while listening to his parents, left a lasting impact on how he viewed the partition of his country and more generally his attitude to Anglo-Irish relations. His personal connections with Ulster, its history, the land and the people, always remained close to his heart. It is this closeness, this understanding of the northern way of life that imbued his political thinking and nurtured his lifelong and deep-rooted republicanism. He was immensely proud of his northern background. Addressing Dáil Éireann in 1964, for instance, he proclaimed with gravitas: ‘I am a man of northern extraction!’16
It was Haughey’s love for Ulster and a wish to see Ireland united that instilled in him a lifelong antipathy for the Irish border, both in its physical and psychological existence. ‘The fact that my roots are here [in Derry]’, he said in the 1980s, ‘makes the whole border thing preposterous to me. I can never [arrive at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland], without experiencing deep feelings of anger and resentment’, the whole situation he felt was ‘nonsense’. He continued:
This border is only there for sixty years, it’s 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. It runs through the main street of towns and villages and divides farmyards, even. It separates neighbour from neighbour.17
Haughey’s hatred for the partition of Ireland needs therefore to be understood within the context of his personal connections to Ulster. His father and mother and their respective families all resented having to live in Northern Ireland, which they believed to have been artificially created by the British government under the terms of the Government of Ireland Act 1920. It was this sense of injustice that created and fed Haughey’s anti-partitionism. For the remainder of his lifetime he instinctively remained a vocal opponent of what he would later describe as the ‘failed political entity’ that was Northern Ireland.
Burning the Union Jack: the young Haughey and Northern Ireland, 1940s
By all accounts Haughey enjoyed his teenage years; academically he was diligent, while on the sports field he was fearless. During the early 1940s he represented the Leinster Colleges in hurling and Gaelic football. His notorious temper made an early appearance during this period when he was suspended for a year for striking a linesman while playing for Parnell’s GAA club. In 1943, on coming first in the Dublin Corporation scholarship examination, Haughey attended University College Dublin (UCD), where he studied commerce, graduating with an honours degree in 1946.18
Apart from a promising academic future, following in the footsteps of his father, Haughey also had his sights set on a possible military career. In September 1941, as the Second World War entered its third year and the threat of a foreign invasion increased, Haughey joined the Local Defence Forces (LDF), based in Collinstown battalion. He was platoon leader from November 1943 until he left the LDF in March 1946. In June of the following year he was commissioned in the Fórsa Cosanta Áitiúil (FCÁ),19 as 2nd lieutenant.20 In February 1953 he was promoted to lieutenant, eventually becoming officer commanding ‘A’ company, North Dublin battalion.21 During this period he gave serious consideration to pursuing an army career. However, he eventually resigned from his post in the FCÁ in 1957 on being elected as a TD.22
It was during these formative years that Haughey’s republicanism first boiled to the surface. On VE Day, 8 May 1945, he was notoriously involved in the burning of a Union Jack. The sequence of events leading to this incident is difficult to decipher, but a general picture can be pieced together. At 2pm the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) formally announced the Allied victory over Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich following the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany. Thousands of people lined the streets along Dublin’s main thoroughfares to celebrate the Allied victory. Trinity College Dublin (TCD) soon became the centre for ‘an impromptu celebration’.23
According to an account by the Irish Times at approximately 2.30pm, fifty to sixty students appeared on the roof of TCD’s main entrance, waving Union Jacks and singing ‘God Save the Queen’, ‘Rule Britannia’, ‘There’ll Always be