Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy

by T. Ryle Dwyer

  A bill to increase the salaries of judges, for instance, was particularly controversial, because of the attitude of some members of the opposition. Charlie realised the bill would be unpopular with many people, but he contended that substantial salary increases were necessary to ensure the best and most capable people were on the bench.

  ‘It is a natural tendency of people to be envious of highly-paid people and I accuse the opposition of playing on that simple human emotion and trying to make political capital out of it,’ he told the Dáil. ‘A man who is only earning £9 or £10 per week is going to resent an already highly paid member of the judiciary getting an increase. It is difficult to explain to such a man why this is necessary and the opposition are doing their best to make sure that the people will be as envious as possible.’

  ‘Do we not all know that a man’s work or value is judged by what he earns?’ he asked on introducing that bill. ‘It is a human and natural thing and it is something which is very common here – to look down on a man who does not earn as much as you do. I think it applies to all levels of our society.’

  While that kind of thinking may have been fundamental to Charlie’s philosophy, it had no appeal whatever to a Socialist like Noel Browne. ‘I do not agree with that at all,’ Browne said. ‘I think the complete contrary is true.’

  People like the Little Sisters of the Poor or the Carmelite fathers earned very little, but this did not mean that society placed more value on the services of brothel keepers just because they were paid more money.

  ‘I do not know anything about them. I leave them to the deputy,’ Charlie replied sarcastically.

  There was little empathy between Browne and Charlie. As Minister for Justice, the latter was involved largely with legislation which had little to do with the needs of the poor or underprivileged. He contended, however, that he cared about the poor as much as any politician. In fact, he introduced the first bill to provide free legal aid, though the circumstances were very restrictive because of financial constraints.

  In supporting the introduction of a controversial sales tax in the budget of 1963, Charlie argued that the new tax would give the government the financial resources necessary to increase children’s allowances and social welfare benefits.

  Noel Browne objected that this form of tax would hurt the poor more than the rich because both would have to pay it equally. His criticism led to some rather unseemly exchanges in which Charlie charged that Browne had ‘difficulty proving he is not a Communist’.

  ‘Oh, shut up,’ Charlie exclaimed when Browne sought to question him in the Dáil on 11 July 1963.

  ‘The minister will not make me shut up by his puppyish tactics,’ Browne replied. Later the same day he had his chance to tell Charlie to be quiet. He was complaining that there would be an exemption from the turnover tax for medicines for animals but not for humans. Charlie tried to explain, but Browne cut him off.

  ‘I am not finished,’ he said. ‘Do not interrupt me.’

  ‘Do not be so dictatorial,’ replied Charlie.

  ‘Do not be so damned imperious,’ Browne snapped.

  ‘This is arrogance indeed. I was only trying to be helpful.’

  ‘Do not be so supercilious. Sit down and behave yourself.’

  ‘This is the Communist mentality,’ said Charlie.

  Browne appealed to the chair to order that the remark be withdrawn as it was an indication that he was a Communist.

  ‘It is not,’ Charlie insisted. ‘It is an indication of the Communist mentality.

  ‘I do not see any implication that the deputy is a Communist,’ the acting speaker ruled.

  ‘I say the minister’s behaviour is the behaviour of a Fascist,’ Browne retorted.

  ‘That rubs off me much more lightly,’ Charlie replied.

  By squabbling with Browne, a recognised champion of the poor and underprivileged, Charlie was inevitably seen as a friend of the rich, and his ostentatious lifestyle exacerbated the impression. Fianna Fáil had for long been proud that it consisted of the men with the cloth caps, but Charlie was one of those in the mohair suits who were representative of a new breed. A wealthy businessman who owned racehorses and rode with the hunt, he enjoyed his prosperity and flaunted it, with the result that he became the object of gossip and colourful rumours, both ribald and vicious.

  There were all kinds of unfounded rumours about his love-life and how he supposedly got involved in scrapes with husbands and the boyfriends of women all over the country. Some seemed to take on a life of their own, no matter how often denied. The late Eamonn Andrews was supposed to have hammered Charlie at a function one night. It would, of course, have been a total mismatch physically, and the incident never took place. Yet the rumours haunted Andrews for the rest of his life. In later years it would even be published, but most of the rumours were never printed because of the country’s libel laws, which were, incidentally, updated by Charlie himself in 1963.

  The Sunday Independent provoked his wrath by publishing a cartoon depicting him in the midst of a group of drunken people in evening dress being off-loaded from a paddy wagon outside a garda station, as a garda was saying: ‘Come on out, you tally-hoing, hunt-balling pack ... Oh sorry Mr Minister, I didn’t see you in there.’ Although this was mild in comparison to some later cartoons, Charlie threatened legal action and the Sunday Independent settled by making a contribution to a charity of his choice.

  In the eyes of reporters Charlie ‘was too clever by half’, according to John Healy, who noted that ‘it was probably at this stage in his career and the affair of the secret courts which started the love-hate relationship between Haughey and the media’.

  COWBOY TROUBLE

  ‘Nineteen sixty-four was one of the best years ever for Irish agriculture,’ Charlie told the Dáil in his first annual review as Minister for Agriculture on 29 April 1965. On average farm income had risen by an phenomenal 20%. The increase had been largely due to a dramatic rise in cattle exports. There had been an 11% increase in store cattle exports and a 66.6% increase in fat cattle. Beef shipments to the continent almost quadrupled in value from £3.3 millions to £12.7 millions.

  The following year he was still talking in extremely optimistic terms in his next report. ‘The prospects for the agricultural industry was never better,’ he said. The whole country had been attested for bovine tuberculosis, and he rather rashly proclaimed that the disease was almost eradicated. ‘From now on,’ he said, ‘there is very little excuse for an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis in a herd.’

  The marked increase in agricultural production did not, however, guarantee an increased income for farmers. In 1965 the average rise was about 5%, which was slightly higher than the average rise in industrial wages, but Charlie warned of ominous indications as ‘food surpluses were appearing everywhere’. The highly protective nature of the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Economic Community (EEC) was particularly worrying, because it was rapidly curtailing the opportunities for Irish expansion.

  ‘We were planning for major increases in our agricultural production and exports, while the markets in which we could dispose of them were becoming more and more restricted,’ Charlie later admitted. Hence he enthusiastically welcomed the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Agreement, due to come into operation in June 1966. The country’s quotas for butter exports to Britain would be doubled, and store cattle were being given free access to the British market.

  ‘It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the breakthrough represented by the fact that the agreement provides for the extension of the British agricultural support price system to our finished products,’ he said. ‘If we work together, this agreement will surely mark the beginning of a period of development and progress in Irish agriculture unparalleled in our history.’

  His optimistic projections would begin to haunt him even before the end of the month when he ran into difficulties with the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA), which was demanding higher milk pric
es.

  The ICMSA advocated the introduction of a new two-tier price system in accordance with which all farmers would receive an extra 4 pence per gallon for the first 7,000 gallons of milk they produced annually and 2 pence per gallon for any milk above that quota. Since the average milk delivery was only around 3,600 gallons per year, it meant that almost all dairy farmers would enjoy the full benefits of such an increase. Only the very largest farmers, who were more likely to be members of the rival National Farmers’ Association, were likely to exceed the quota.

  Under the leadership of its president, John Feely, the ICMSA placed a picket outside Leinster House on 27 April 1966. The government responded rather high-handedly by having the 28 picketers arrested under the Offences Against the State Act, but Feely defiantly announced the picket would remain until his organisation’s demands were met. Seventy-eight farmers were arrested while picketing next day and a further 80 the following day as the dispute escalated.

  As with the Macushla Revolt, Charlie refused to talk while the protesters were acting illegally. He said that he would discuss ‘other ways in which the income of the dairy farmer can be increased’, he made it clear that he would not concede the price increase demanded.

  The ICMSA responded by removing its picket so that discussions could be held with Charlie on 4 May, but there was no progress. ‘They gave me to understand clearly that they were only interested and would accept nothing less than their original two-tier price system,’ Charlie told the Dáil.

  He had strong objections to this two-tier system, both from the philosophical and administrative standpoints. For one thing, he argued the government simply could not afford the extra £6 million a year that the ICMSA scheme would cost, as this amounted to more than 15% of the annual agricultural budget at the time. Moreover he contended that reducing the price for milk above the quota would be an administrative nightmare and act as a disincentive.

  ‘It would be bad economics to discourage more efficient and more largescale production,’ Charlie argued. Prompted by his own capitalist instincts, he also had reservations about granting any price increase under the circumstances for fear it would lead to socialised agriculture. ‘There is a danger that agitation directed only to getting higher prices may develop a kind of dole mentality which would eventually make agriculture subservient to the state,’ he contended. ‘What I want to achieve is a self-reliant, independent and progressive agriculture, fully backed by, but not utterly dependent on, the state.’

  Before the end of the month, however, he was sounding a more sombre note from the exuberant optimism of April. ‘The task which confronts me, indeed any Minister for Agriculture,’ he told the Dáil on 26 May 1966, ‘is of such vast proportions and the problems are so intractable that I do not think it is possible ever to be enthusiastic about the progress which is being achieved at any given moment compared with what still remains to be done.’

  Charlie proceeded to back down on the milk price issue that day. He announced an immediate increase of two pence per gallon with a further penny per gallon for quality milk after 1 April 1967. Counting the one penny per gallon extra previously given for quality milk, this meant that those farmers who had not been producing milk with a high enough cream content previously would actually get the requested four pence per gallon extra within twelve months, if they got their milk up to the desired quality.

  In view of the strong, reasoned stand taken by Charlie against any increase only weeks earlier, questions must be asked about his eventual surrender. Why did he virtually capitulate on the issue?

  There was no doubt in the minds of the opposition that the concessions were related to the presidential election campaign being conducted at the time. Fine Gael’s candidate, T. F. O’Higgins, was running very well in Dublin and other urban areas, with the result that the incumbent president, Eamon de Valera, needed Fianna Fáil’s traditional rural support to win a second term. This support would obviously be endangered if the government was still at odds with farmers over the price of milk.

  As de Valera’s national director of elections, Charlie pulled a political stroke and shored up the president’s rural support by conceding on the milk price issue. In view of the narrowness of de Valera’s subsequent victory, the concession quite conceivably made the difference between victory and defeat. It appeared that Charlie had backed down under ICMSA pressure, and he would pay for this dearly before the year was out.

  Figuratively speaking Charlie was flying high at this time and it was the start of a particularly crucial period because his father-in-law, Seán Lemass, had indicated his intention to retire as Taoiseach within the next twelve months. Charlie, who had never made any secret of his aspirations for the office, was clearly in an advantageous position. As Minister for Agriculture, he was in one of the most influential posts in the government and his comparative youth was a decided advantage because, on his next birthday, he would be the same age as John F. Kennedy was when he became the youngest president ever to be elected in the United States. Kennedy had made a profound impression on the Irish people, and Charlie never seemed averse to being compared with the late president. And those comparisons extended beyond the political arena.

  THWARTED AMBITION

  Much of Charlie’s success as a politician was due to his ability to sell himself. Having talked so favourably about the prospects for Irish agriculture in early 1966, he came in for strong criticism when things began to go wrong, especially when the bottom virtually fell out of the cattle market that summer.

  Eighty per cent of Irish cattle and beef were exported, with the result there was little that he, or the Department of Agriculture, could do about controlling those markets. When the EEC virtually closed its doors to beef imports from outside the community in April 1966, Irish farmers had to turn to the British market to sell their surplus cattle, but they ran into serious difficulties here, too. A seaman’s strike in Britain initially blocked imports and, after it was settled, a glut developed as the backlog was dumped on the market. This was further complicated by a credit squeeze which impaired the ability of British importers to keep Irish cattle for the two months necessary to claim a British government subsidy. Hence the demand for Irish cattle dropped.

  As prices tumbled Charlie was criticised. It was not his fault, but he had left himself wide open to censure by his failure to prepare farmers for the slump, which became virtually inevitable following the closing of EEC markets in April. Apprising farmers at that stage would, of course, have meant giving them bad news before the presidential election and that was not Charlie’s way of doing things.

  At the annual general meeting of the National Farmers’ Association (NFA) in August, Rickard Deasy, the organisation’s president, criticised the minister’s handling of events. Always highly sensitive to criticism at the best of times, Charlie was particularly sensitive now that his father-in-law was due to step down within the next six months. He over-reacted to the criticism by cancelling a planned meeting with NFA leaders. And his problems were compounded by his own arrogance as he got into a controversy with Radio Telefís Éireann (RTÉ) over the whole affair.

  On 29 September he told the Dáil that farmers should hold on to their cattle to await better prices. The NFA, on the other hand, advised them to sell as soon as possible because prices would continue to drop. That night RTÉ reported Charlie’s statement followed by the NFA’s contradictory advice on its nightly television news. Charlie immediately telephoned the news department to protest.

  ‘I felt compelled in the public interest to protest that the NFA statement should be carried immediately after mine,’ he explained. ‘I gave specific advice to farmers in reply to questions from deputies in the Dáil as the responsible minister, and I felt that to have my advice followed by a contradiction from an organisation could only lead to confusion and damage the industry.’ As a result of his protest, the item was dropped from further bulletins that evening. Consequently questions were asked in the Dáil, where Charlie came
across rather arrogantly.

  ‘I think it was a very unwise thing to say the least of it, for Radio Telefís Éireann to follow that solemn advice of mine given as Minister for Agriculture with a contradiction by one organisation,’ he said. ‘I pointed this out to the news room of Telefís Éireann and I think I was absolutely right in doing so.’

  The RTÉ affair was not only as an attempt ‘to hinder the democratic right of freedom of speech’, an NFA spokesman argued, but also ‘one further example of the arrogance of Mr Haughey’. The latter suddenly found himself embroiled in a controversy over the freedom of broadcasting.

  RTÉ journalists had been uneasy for some months over the station’s role in the recent presidential election campaign. As de Valera was in his mid-eighties and almost totally blind, he had been unable to match his younger opponent on the campaign trail. It was therefore decided that he would not campaign at all. As his director of elections, Charlie sought to minimise the Fine Gael candidate’s physical advantages by persuading RTÉ not to cover the campaign in the supposed interests of fairness.

  RTÉ was asked to ignore the Fine Gael campaign, because the president would not be campaigning himself as he was supposed to be above politics. RTÉ’s news department accepted the argument, which was unfair to Fine Gael’s T. F. O’Higgins. Unlike the president, he campaigned actively but got practically no news coverage, whereas Charlie dispatched ministers around the country, where they highlighted de Valera’s bid for re-election by making newsworthy announcements. Charlie was credited with pulling a political master stroke, but the pent up frustrations of RTÉ journalists exploded during the controversy with the NFA.

  Matters were compounded when Charlie withdrew from a scheduled television appearance on a current affairs programme. He was supposed to debate the cattle situation with Deasy. Despite strong objections from Charlie, RTÉ went ahead with the programme, using one of its own reporters, Ted Nealon, to put forward the minister’s case.