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 of Haughey’s private remarks and interviewed several people who worked closely with him, a quite different picture emerges. In fact, Haughey was an extremely 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,