Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy

by T. Ryle Dwyer

  ‘We would stick to the same levels of borrowing and the current budget deficit,’ he told a party rally, ‘because it would not be sensible, wise or prudent to depart too much.’ He contended, however, that some of the harsher aspects of the defeated budget could easily be eliminated.

  If Charlie hoped that taking this line would unite the dissidents behind him, he must have been sorely disappointed. Interviewed on RTÉ radio’s This Week programme next day, O’Donoghue beat around the proverbial bush rather than answer when asked four different times if he thought Charlie was fit to be Taoiseach. In another RTÉ interview later in the campaign, Colley similarly refused to say that he hoped Charlie would be the next Taoiseach.

  When Charlie tried to explain how the government’s budget targets could be met without adopting the harsher measures proposed, he and his economic advisers were accused of ‘crea tive ac counting’ because their figures simply did not add up. The shortfall was referred to as ‘Fianna Fáil’s funny money’.

  Charlie’s credibility on such matters was further questioned at the height of the campaign when Magill magazine published a leaked Department of Finance document showing that his government had deliberately underestimated expenditure in the run up to the 1981 general election.

  The Fianna Fáil leader’s image had clearly become an electoral liability as he trailed FitzGerald by more than twenty points in the public opinion polls. By the time of the last such survey before election day, Charlie was only the choice for Taoiseach of only 33% of the electorate as against 56% for FitzGerald.

  Albert Reynolds, Fianna Fáil’s national director of elections, accused Fine Gael of conducting a smear campaign against Charlie. There could be no doubt he was being treated unfairly. This was acknowledged by some of his most outspoken critics.

  ‘There was a lot of personal sniping against Charlie Haughey which was unfair,’ Geraldine Kennedy admitted. ‘It could just as equally have been done on Garret FitzGerald, and it wasn’t.’

  Fianna Fáil dissidents had been hinting that their leader was an unsuitable person to lead the country, and the media reflected this even though no specific evidence was cited to justify the unstated reservations about him. ‘Because they were unstated and therefore unsubstantiated, they were unfair,’ conceded Seán Duignan, RTÉ’s political correspondent.

  THE O’MALLEY HEAVE

  On election day there was a sensational development when Charlie’s election agent, Pat O’Connor, was arrested on a charge of double voting. He and his family had inadvertently been registered to vote at two different polling stations. There was evidence that he and his daughter had requested ballot papers at both places, but to secure a conviction it was necessary to prove not only that they had deposited two ballot papers each but also that they had actually voted correctly on each. If they had deliberately or inadvertently spoiled their voting papers, they would not be deemed to have voted under the existing law. As there was no way of identifying the ballot papers to prove that either of them had voted properly once, much less twice, they were acquitted of the charges.

  Of course, Charlie was not personally involved in any of this, but his name was immediately dragged into the affair, because it involved his election agent, who was also his solicitor and a close personal friend. Charlie’s opponents predictably exploited the affair against him.

  One of those elected, after a seven-month absence from the Dáil, was Jim Gibbons, who lost no time in raising the spectre of an impending challenge to Charlie. ‘I expect the question of the leadership will be raised at the first meeting of the parliamentary party,’ he told reporters following his victory. This was immediately interpreted as the first move in a bid to get rid of Charlie. As the count continued the Evening Herald went on sale with a bold front page headline: ‘Leadership Fight Facing Haughey’.

  Some hours later it became apparent that Fianna Fáil were going to be three votes short of an overall majority in the Dáil. Disgruntled members of the party openly contended that Charlie had been a distinct electoral liability.

  The outgoing chairman of the parliamentary party, William Kenneally, who had just lost his seat in Waterford, made no secret of his disillusionment. He told Geraldine Kennedy that the party would have fared much better under a more popular leader, with the result that he ‘would not be surprised’ if the leadership became an issue in the very near future. She reported that ‘a movement seemed to be brewing’ within Fianna Fáil to overthrow the ‘leader as he struggles to form the next government without an overall majority’.

  Charlie was obviously stung by the story, which he described as ‘rubbish’ during an interview that afternoon on RTÉ’s lunchtime news programme. ‘If I were in the Sunday Tribune,’ he said, ‘I would be inclined to look after my own future.’

  Speculation about the leadership was certainly not helping his chances of regaining power. He needed the active support of at least two deputies from outside his own party and the abstention of another, in order to replace FitzGerald. This was likely to prove difficult when there was uncertainty about his own hold on the leadership of Fianna Fáil. He therefore had a meeting of the new parliamentary party called for Thursday, 25 February, with a view to selecting the party’s nominee for Taoiseach.

  If only to remove the uncertainty, his desire to have the issue resolved speedily was understandable. Of course, his opponents felt he was simply trying to deny them time to organise properly. They went into action and held a series of backroom meetings at which Colley threw his support to O’Malley, who then became the front-runner among the potential challengers.

  O’Malley began canvassing for support with the help of Colley, Seamus Brennan, Martin O’Donoghue and others. Although many deputies had reservations about the timing of a challenge when there was a real chance of getting into power, O’Malley’s people were encouraged by the response. At one point they were convinced they had the support of a majority of deputies, and their optimistic predictions were reflected by the media.

  Vincent Browne published a list of 30 Fianna Fáil deputies who he believed would probably vote against Charlie, while he could only count 17 probable supporters. On the eve of the party meeting, the Irish Independent had a front page article by Bruce Arnold with a headline running right across the top of the page: ‘My score so far Haughey 20, O’Malley 46, Unknowns 15’.

  The headline was an example of sloppy proof-reading. Arnold had only referred to 36 deputies, whom he listed as being prepared to support O’Malley – not the 46 stated in the headline, probably written by a sub-editor. However, the newspaper made no effort to correct the mistake, which was particularly significant because the figure cited would have been a clear majority of Fianna Fáil deputies, while Arnold’s list was five short of the vital number. Suddenly O’Malley became a money-on favourite with bookmakers to replace Charlie.

  It was even rumoured that the latter was going to resign that day. Stephen Collins, a young reporter with the Irish Press group, was sent to Leinster House to find out, but when he asked Charlie he was not prepared for the reaction.

  Charlie made a drive at him. ‘Would you fuck off,’ he shouted, backing him against a wall and spelling out his message. ‘That’s F-U-C-K- O-F-F.’

  A photographer colleague came to the rescue by pointing out that Collins was only doing his job. Charlie promptly regained his composure. ‘What is your question again?’ he asked.

  Collins repeated it, this time with an explanation that his news desk had a tip that Charlie was about to resign. ‘That’s complete nonsense,’ the Fianna Fáil leader replied quite calmly. ‘I have no intention of resigning.’ And with that he walked away.

  His people were clearly running scared. Throughout the day and into the early hours of the following morning they bombarded dissident and wavering deputies with telephone calls to support Charlie. At around midnight O’Malley formally announced that he would be challenging for the party’s nomination next morning.

  Arnold’s list act
ually hurt O’Malley’s chances, because it had the dual effect of shocking Charlie’s people into action and providing them with the names of deputies on whom to concentrate their pressure. But Charlie could feel justifiably aggrieved about the way the Irish In dependent was covering the story, especially the reports emanating from dissident sources. What those people had to say was newsworthy, even when inaccurate, but inaccurate charges should have been identified as such and not credulously reported.

  On the morning of the parliamentary party meeting, for instance, there was a front page article in which Raymond Smith not only repeated a dissident prediction that O’Malley had ‘sufficient votes to oust Mr Haughey’, but also quoted one of the dissidents as saying that ‘what’s happening now is an exact carbon copy of how Mr Lynch was forced out of the Fianna Fáil leadership through a sequence of events’.

  The implications were unmistakable – Charlie and his supporters had brought down Lynch and they were now receiving some of their own medicine. But Lynch had retired voluntarily. While there had been sniping against him in 1979, it was Gibbons, one of Charlie’s bitterest critics and the one who set the ball rolling in this latest challenge, who was the first to break party discipline by refusing to support the government’s contraception bill that April, and it was one of O’Malley’s strongest backers, George Colley, who had persuaded Lynch to retire early in the belief that the time was opportune for him to win the leadership. Consequently it was unfair of the press not to question the scenario then being painted by the dissidents.

  Aspects of the press coverage were undoubtedly biased against Charlie, but it should be noted that the Irish Times and Irish Press leaned heavily towards him in their editorial comments. The Cork Examiner was more detached, but it predicted he would win. The Irish Independent was the only national daily which carried an editorial leaning towards O’Malley.

  There was a great air of expectation about Leinster House that morning. Photographers and a television camera were allowed into the meeting room beforehand. Charlie’s entrance was stage-managed for the television camera. He was ceremoniously announced so that his supporters could greet him with one of those spontaneous bursts of applause. The press were then ushered out.

  Pádraig Faulkner was one of the first deputies to speak. He had opposed Charlie in the past but he said was supporting him this time, and he urged O’Malley not to go through with the challenge, because such a contest would be too divisive and would rip the party asunder. Jim Tunney, Rory O’Hanlon, and Liam Lawlor – all of whom had been listed as anti-Haughey by both Vincent Browne and Bruce Arnold – spoke in a similar vein. But it was Martin O’Donoghue who delivered the most devastating blow of all when he urged that there should be no contest. Suddenly it seemed that O’Malley’s support had evaporated. He announced he would not allow his name to go forward, and Charlie was chosen by acclamation. The whole meeting was over in little less than an hour.

  Afterwards Charlie was triumphant. ‘You got it wrong!’ he crowed to a reporter on his way into a press conference.

  He was particularly annoyed at the Irish Independent. When Raymond Smith asked a question without first identifying himself, Charlie pretended not to recognise him.

  ‘Who is this man?’ he asked.

  ‘You can call me Mr Smith, or Raymond, or Ray, but you don’t have to ask who I am.’

  ‘ To me,’ Charlie said contemptuously, ‘you are just a face in the crowd. Now what is your question?’

  It was a bad start to the press conference at which Charlie’s annoyance at the Irish Independent would surface repeatedly. He interrupted in the middle of one question as Smith was saying that ‘certain names have been mentioned in the papers as who might vote against you –’

  ‘I am delighted you mentioned that,’ Charlie interjected, ‘because your particular newspaper published perhaps the falsest list of names in Irish journalism.’ He emphasised ad nauseam that he had been selected unanimously and he complained repeatedly that media speculation about the O’Malley challenge had turned out to be just ‘so much rubbish’.

  DOING DEALS

  To regain power Charlie’s best chance seemed to lie with securing the support of independents, who included his arms crisis colleague Neil Blaney. John O’Connell, the sitting Speaker could be neutralised by being re-appointed, which meant that all Fianna Fáil needed was the support of the newly elected Dublin Independent, Tony Gregory, who seemed to share Charlie’s strong Nationalistic views. Gregory obviously held the key to power.

  ‘I have 78 seats, plus Blaney, and O’Connell will be Ceann Comhairle,’ Charlie told Gregory on Tuesday, 23 February. ‘I need your vote to become Taoiseach. What do you want?’

  Intermittent negotiations were conducted during the next two weeks. But this was not the only thing Charlie was working on. He also had approaches made to the Fine Gael deputy, Richard Burke, to see if he would be interested in being appointed Irish commissioner to the EEC. This would necessitate his resignation from the Dáil and would mean that Fianna Fáil would need one vote less to gain power. But Burke killed the speculation with a statement emphasising that there was ‘no possibility’ that he would fail to vote for Garret FitzGerald for Taoiseach when the Dáil reconvened on 9 March 1982.

  Having successfully staved off the O’Malley challenge, Charlie returned to the task of winning the support of Gregory. Although Charlie had never tired of expressing his admiration of his father-in-law’s political acumen, he seemed curiously oblivious to the example set by Seán Lemass under comparatively similar circumstances back in 1961. Fianna Fáil lacked a majority then, but Lemass refused to deal with anyone. Before the Dáil voted on his renomination as Taoiseach, he proudly proclaimed that he had not and would not ask for support from outside Fianna Fáil. He had made no deals, but he was re-elected any way.

  When Charlie went to Gregory, however, the latter came up with a long list of specific demands in matters relating to employment, housing, health and education in Dublin, especially in the inner city area. Throughout the discussions, which were held at Gregory’s headquarters, Charlie seemed highly amenable. He personally agreed with most of the demands.

  ‘You’re pushing an open door,’ was his stock response.

  ‘It was clear he wasn’t interested in the other independents,’ Gregory said afterwards. ‘He believed I could accommodate him.’

  FitzGerald also tried to win over Gregory with lavish promises but the Fine Gael leader was in a weaker position because, in addition to Gregory, he needed the support of the Workers’ party and at least one other Independent, so he could not offer as much to Gregory. Charlie won out in this auction for power by agreeing to have £4 million allocated to employ 500 extra men in the inner city, have 3,746 new jobs created in the same area within the next three years, have Industrial Development Authority grants raised to attract new industries to the city, acquire a 27 acre port and docks site, provide government money to build 440 new houses in the inner city and another 1,600 in the rest of Dublin, have free medical cards provided for all pensioners, to have the supplementary welfare system over-hauled, increase the number of remedial teachers in the inner city, and to nationalise Clondalkin Paper Mills, if no other option could be agreed upon within three months. Those were only some of the features outlined in the agreement, which both Charlie and Gregory signed as principals. The document was then witnessed by Michael Mullen, the general secretary of the Irish Transport and General Workers Union.

  ‘As the Mafia say,’ Charlie exclaimed on shaking hands with Gregory following the signing, ‘it is a pleasure to do business with you.’

  Had Charlie held out as Seán Lemass had done in 1961, he would probably have been elected anyway, because the three Workers’ party deputies voted for him. In all likelihood he did not need Gregory’s vote.

  Following his elections as Taoiseach, Charlie went back to Burke with his offer of the European commissionership. Burke agreed to take the appointment, but then backed off when a st
orm erupted within Fine Gael, only to change his mind again and accept the position. As a result he resigned from the Dáil, leaving a vacancy in the Dublin West constituency, where he had won the seat by a narrow margin over Charlie’s wife’s sister-in-law, Eileen Lemass.

  The Irish Times and Irish Press praised Burke’s appointment to the EEC, but The Cork Examiner, which generally adopted a rather bland, non-partisan editorial policy, came out with a blistering condemnation of Charlie’s assertion that the appointment was made purely in the national interest. ‘The Taoiseach must be entirely contemptuous of the intelligence of the Irish people to insult them with this sort of hypocrisy,’ the editorial contended.

  The subsequent by-election was held at the height of the Falkland’s War* during which the Fianna Fáil leader was accused of ‘playing the green card for all that it is worth’. But Fine Gael retained the seat. Suddenly what had been called ‘one of the most extraordinary political strokes’ of Charlie’s career turned sour; he had given a ‘plum job’ to someone outside his party and received nothing in return.

  FALKLAND’S WAR

  Charlie’s relations with Margaret Thatcher were already strained as a result of events following the Dublin Castle Summit of December 1980, coupled with what the British believed were Charlie’s efforts to exploit the partition issue in order to paper over his serious economic difficulties at home.

  The Haughey government, on the other hand, was annoyed at the extortionist tactics being employed by the British in vetoing new farm prices within the EEC in order to get Britain’s budgetary contribution lowered. Things were further complicated as relations reached a new low during the international crisis over Argentina’s invasion of the Falkland Islands.

  When the invasion began on 2 April 1982, most Irish people did not even know where the islands were. Britain had seized them from Argentina in 1833 but now the overwhelming majority of inhabitants wished to remain British, so Britain protested against the seizure to the Security Council of the United Nations (UN), which passed Resolution 502 calling for an immediate Argentinean withdrawal.