Fáil TD for North-East Dublin. He was to retain this seat for the rest of his political career. His success came at the expense of Harry Colley, who lost his seat after thirteen years as Fianna Fáil TD. Colley’s election defeat accelerated the personal enmity between Haughey and George Colley, which steadily grew over the subsequent years. With Fianna Fáil back in government following three years in the political wilderness, Haughey learned his trade on the party’s backbenches.
The only apparent reference that Haughey made to Northern Ireland during his initial years as a backbencher TD came in the summer of 1957. During a debate in Dáil Éireann in July of that year regarding the commencement of the IRA border campaign (1956–62), he urged Independent TD for Roscommon Jack (John) McQuillan to point out what constitutional steps could help to deliver a united Ireland.101 Apart from this incursion Haughey rarely involved himself in the Northern Ireland question. In fact, his initial performance during the early years was unremarkable, fulfilling the role as a mere spectator in Dáil Éireann. Over time, however, he soon grasped the political nettle. In the mould of his father-in-law, Haughey concerned himself mostly with economic affairs. His contributions to debates were generally focused on the need for direct foreign investment, lower direct taxation and urban and rural redevelopments.
Éamon de Valera’s decision to retire as Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach two years later, in June 1959, was the indirect catalyst to Haughey’s political career. Upon de Valera’s announcement the spotlight immediately turned on who would replace him as Fianna Fáil president. Lemass was the obvious candidate. At fifty-eight years of age he was viewed as the most realistic and practical man in the government, with a sound grasp of economics. Indeed, the result of the succession race was never really in doubt, even if there was a little discontent among a select few deputies.102 After the furore of de Valera’s election as president of Ireland, the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party and the national executive gathered on 22 June 1959 to elect a new leader. Seán MacEntee duly proposed, and Frank Aiken seconded, Lemass as the second leader of Fianna Fáil.103 Soon after the national executive met to ratify the decision104 and the following day Lemass was officially elected taoiseach by the Dáil.
It did not take long for Haughey’s family connections with the most powerful man in the country to pay off. In May 1960, although apparently against Lemass’s advice to his son-in-law, Haughey was appointed parliamentary secretary to the minister for justice, Oscar Traynor (Traynor was known to be unhappy about Haughey’s appointment).105 Haughey embraced his new role with the kind of energy that became characteristic of his political style. He soon gained a reputation as an able and confident speaker, a politician you could rely on for ‘getting things done’, as the British Embassy in Dublin subsequently recounted.106 Within the space of several months he introduced and steered through the Dáil, several pieces of legislations, ranging from the Rent Restrictions Bill to the Civil Liability Bill.
The fruits of Haughey’s labour soon paid off. Following the 1961 Irish general election, which Fianna Fáil won, Haughey was appointed minister for justice, following Traynor’s retirement from mainstream politics. Haughey immediately threw himself into his first ministerial portfolio. He implemented a major programme of legal reform, including the 1962 Criminal Justice (Legal Aid) Act, the 1964 Succession Act and the abolition of capital punishment for the majority of offences.107 Despite their subsequent animosity towards one another, Peter Berry, secretary of the Department of Justice, later noted that of the fourteen ministers he had served under in the Department of Justice, Haughey was by far the most able.108 Indeed, Haughey’s future political arch-nemesis, Garret FitzGerald, later recounted that the former was an ‘excellent minister, particularly in Justice’.109
Apart from a crusade to modernise and reform Ireland’s legal field, Haughey is best remembered during this period for helping to suppress the IRA border campaign, which had been ongoing since 1956. Following Fianna Fáil’s return to government in October 1961, Lemass was determined to tackle the IRA head on. Although he commanded only a minority position in the Dáil, he considered Fianna Fáil’s position safe enough to wage a campaign against the illegal organisation. Throughout 1961 the IRA carried out a number of horrific murders. On 27 January, the movement shot dead a young Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) corporal, Norman Anderson. This was followed by further IRA attacks throughout 1961. The most brutal of these was carried out in November, when the movement ambushed an RUC police patrol in Jonesborough, Co. Armagh. During the ambush an RUC policeman, Constable William Hunter, was killed.110 These attacks, which were an increasing source of embarrassment for the Irish government, reinforced Lemass’s opposition to physical force republicanism.
In response to the renewed IRA campaign, the Irish government, led by Lemass and Haughey, reactivated the Special Criminal Courts by filling vacancies created by retirements or deaths.111 The minister for justice orchestrated a publicity campaign portraying the IRA as an illegal organisation that, in his words, did not ‘serve the cause of national unity’.112 Although Haughey referred to the deep resentment felt by the people in the Irish Republic to partition, he condemned as ‘foolish’ any attempts to secure a united Ireland by force.113 The government’s propaganda offensive proved successful and by the early months of 1962 public sympathy for the IRA had waned. In February of that year, realising the futility of its military campaign, and the general public’s apathy, the IRA leadership issued orders for the movement to ‘dump arms’.114 As Barry Flynn noted: ‘So in February 1962, the curtain fell on a campaign that had failed, and failed utterly to achieve any of its primary objectives.’115
Haughey’s role in bringing the IRA border campaign to an end fitted in nicely with Lemass’s more conciliatory approach to Northern Ireland, as compared to his predecessor de Valera. Lemass’s appointment as taoiseach in 1959 raised hope to a new generation of Fianna Fáil supporters that he ‘would cast aside the ghosts of the past and deal with Irish unity, not as a theoretical aspiration, but as a long-term reality’.116 Significantly, under Lemass, partition and economic policies became intrinsically linked as he adapted Fianna Fáil’s traditional approach towards Northern Ireland to the new economic realities of the 1960s. Guided by one central motivation, the Irish economy, his entire approach to Northern Ireland was based on securing support from Ulster Unionists for his wish to establish a free trade area between Dublin and Belfast.
The Irish government’s 1958 programme for economic expansion, inspired and implemented by the secretary of the Department of Finance, T.K. Whitaker, emphasised the importance of an open market free trade area between Ireland and the United Kingdom. Particular emphasis was placed on dismantling the Irish protectionist regime in preparation for European Economic Community (EEC) membership.117 This new initiative had ramifications for partition. Lemass believed that the first step in securing a free trade area between the Republic and Great Britain was the dismantling of Dublin’s protectionist system against Belfast within the island of Ireland.118 Throughout Lemass’s reign as Fianna Fáil leader, Haughey rowed in behind his father-in-law’s Northern Ireland policy. As part of Lemass’s drive for cross-border co-operation between North and South, Haughey also supported the taoiseach’s occasional use of the term ‘Northern Ireland’ rather than the ‘Six Counties’. Since the early years of the Irish Free State the standard practice in political and administrative circles in the South of Ireland was the constant usage of the term ‘Six-Counties’ to refer to Northern Ireland. This formula was an easy way for politicians in the Irish Republic to propagate their non-recognition of the Northern Ireland state. Although Lemass had no intention of succumbing to Ulster Unionist demands that Northern Ireland should be recognised de jure as part of the United Kingdom, he ‘did want to deal with the political realities of North and South relations’.119
In correspondence with Vivion de Valera, in May 1960, Lemass explained that the use of terms like ‘Belfast government’, ‘Stormont government’, had been the ‘outcome of woolly thinking on the partition issue’.120 If Ulster Unionists were to ever agree to enter a united Ireland based on a federal solution (with a subordinate Northern Ireland parliament in Belfast), he argued that it was nonsensical that the Irish government continued to refrain from using the title ‘government of Northern Ireland’. It was, therefore, merely ‘common sense that the current name would be kept’.121 Haughey followed a similar line of argument in correspondence with the minister for external affairs, Frank Aiken, in 1967. The Irish government,