Haughey vilified in death

The print media turned venomously on Charles Haughey after his death. The tabloids salivated over gossip about his private life. But even the more sober evaluations were almost unanimously vituperative, most especially the Irish Times. In a defining news feature, published on Saturday 17 June, Peter Murtagh claimed the 1982 Haughey government represented the most serious threat to democracy since the civil war.
Vincent Browne analyses the claimsIn support of his claim that Haughey's government of 1982 represented the most serious threat to democracy since the Civil War, Peter Murtagh cites the following:

Haughey was guilty of "rampant cronyism", a "cult of personality" and the "promotion of second raters over others with obvious talent".

Was there no cult of personality with Eamon de Valera, Sean Lemass (remember the slogan: "Let Lemass lead one"?) and Jack Lynch? Was there no "rampant cronyism" in the preferment by other Taoisigh of their chosen ones? And the promotion of second raters over those with greater ability – when was this not the case? Look at the present cabinet!

In the various "heaves" against his leadership, Haughey demanded a roll-call vote.

What's so bad about the electorate knowing how TDs exercised one of their few autonomous decisions, that of choosing or rejecting a leader?

The phones of two journalists were tapped for a few weeks in 1982.

Even if it is true that Haughey ordered the phones of the two journalists to be tapped, does this amount to a threat to democracy and, if so, what about the tapping of the phones of journalists not just for a few weeks but for years on end? And what about the extraordinary circumstances of disloyalty and treachery that gave rise to those phones being tapped? Yes, it was wrong, but a threat to democracy?

Haughey demanded a pledge of loyalty from ministers in his cabinet in October 1982.

This was after some of those ministers had behaved with a treachery unknown in any government of the Irish state before or since. How could Haughey's demand for a pledge of loyalty from openly disloyal ministers be considered a threat to democracy? Was he not, as Taoiseach, entitled to loyalty from ministers who served in his cabinet? Who was defying democracy? Haughey, by demanding that George Colley, Des O'Malley, Martin O'Donoghue and the others abide by the democratic decision of the party in December 1979? Or those who fought relentlessly to overturn that democratic decision?

Haughey complained to the then publisher of the Sunday Tribune, Hugh McLaughlin, about articles written by the paper's then political correspondent, Geraldine Kennedy (now editor of the Irish Times) clearly based on information she was receiving from cabinet ministers who were trying to subvert him as Taoiseach. He asked him to find out who Geraldine Kennedy's contacts were.

Accepting he made the representations mentioned, how heinous is that, especially in the context of the treachery mentioned above?

Haughey's Minister for Justice, Sean Doherty, had taken legal advice "as to whether he could have a number of Fianna Fáil TDs or senators arrested en route to Leinster House to prevent them voting against Haughey during heaves against his leadership".

If this were true, then, certainly, there would be a basis for Peter Murtagh's claim that Haughey's government of 1982 represented a threat to democracy. But is it true?

Why would Doherty or anyone else want to have Fianna Fáil senators arrested to prevent them voting against Haughey in a leadership election, when they had no vote in leadership elections? Curious that in making such a serious accusation about Haughey he would be seen to exaggerate by far the most important point.

But that aside, if it was true that Doherty was examining the possibility of having Fianna Fáil TDs arrested, one would have thought this would have featured prominently in The Boss (the 1997 book by Peter Murtagh, Joe Joyce and John Bowman). Disappointingly the only similar reference in The Boss I can discover is on page 292, a single sentence published within brackets: "(Sean Doherty's period as justice minister had taught him that, unfortunately, TDs would not be arrested on their way to Leinster House for a Dáil vote.)" Note the reference to a "Dáil vote", not a Fianna Fáil leadership vote.

Strange he makes nothing of this in the book, just 26 words, but this is bumped up to 63 words in the post-Haughey article, with far punchier detail.

Odd that.

When Haughey won a leadership vote in October 1982, the former Minister for Defence and Agriculture, Jim Gibbons, "was attacked by an number of drunken Haughey supporters and forced to the ground where he was punched and kicked inside the precincts of the Oireachtas".

Pretty dramatic and terrifying stuff. Certainly deplorable. But even if it were true, how would that suggest the gravest threat to democracy the State has known, and how does Charlie Haughey get blamed for what a few of his drunken supporters did in the heat of the moment?

In The Boss, a book Peter Murtagh co-authored, there is a reference to this episode on page 265. It says simply: "In the car-park outside the [Dáil], the Haughey supporters waited to give their opinions of [Haughey's] opponents. Jim Gibbons was struck by one of them as he made his way to the car."

I think it is true that Jim Gibbons was felled by a kick from one of Haughey's drunken supporters (someone known, incidentally, to Peter Murtagh, and from whom he could have obtained the full story of what happened that evening). In the book the incident is presented as fairly trivial. In the article it is puffed up into a threat against democracy.

Commentary:

The Haughey government of 1982, had it been allowed remain in office and had it not been sabotaged from within, could have been the most effective government the country had known. Having carried on a recklessness that marked his period in opposition from July 1981 to February 1982, Haughey began to get a hold of affairs from July 1982 onwards. He and his Minister for Finance, Ray MacSharry, along with the likes of Padraig Ó hUigín in the Taoiseach's department, drafted a programme for government, 'The Way Forward'. Its purpose was to outline a way out of the economic mess that resulted primarily from the 1977 Fianna Fáil manifesto (the creation of Jack Lynch, Martin O'Donoghue, George Colley and Des O'Malley), the disastrous period of government from 1977 to 1979, and the recklessness of Haughey's first administration.

Essentially what Haughey was attempting to do in 1982 was what he did in 1987. Had he been allowed get on with that in 1982, it could have spared the country and its people a great deal of avoidable misery.

Instead, hysterical crises were invented from nothings and that Haughey government was replaced by the Fine Gael-Labour government of 1982 to 1987, which, because of internal divisions, was hamstrung.

There was/is much to be critical of about the record and personality of Charles Haughey: the aristocratic conceit, the voracious greed, the hypocrisies, and the legacy of a grossly unjust and unfair society. But that is not all the story. Others, many others (most of us?), are guilty of conceit, greed and hypocrisy too and it would be absurd to charge Haughey alone with the legacy of an unjust society – that is a legacy of our political culture.

But there was also to Haughey his humour, his kindness, his astonishing talents and range of interests, his decisiveness, his impulsiveness, his daring, his courage. And that legacy of the peace process and a booming economy in, admittedly, a grossly unfair society.

And there was also – amid the conceit, the greed, the self-centeredness – a simple patriotism.