Courtney McGrail“A Failed Political Entity”: Charles Haughey and the Northern Ireland Question 1945-1992
by Stephen Kelly
(Merrion Press, €24.99 pb / €75.00 hb)
Joe Carroll
Charles Haughey spent much of his political life denouncing Northern Ireland as a “failed political entity”. This well-researched book demonstrates that Haughey’s policy towards Northern Ireland was even more of a failure. Yet the author tries hard to credit Haughey with a vital role in kick-starting the negotiations which led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement six years after he was forced to resign as Taoiseach.
Another of the author’s aims is to show that Haughey was not an opportunist when playing the Northern Ireland card, but had a lifelong hatred of Partition inherited in part from his Derry-born parents.
When the 1970 Arms Crisis broke and Haughey was arrested and charged with attempting to import arms illegally for use in Northern Ireland, both his supporters and opponents were stunned as he had never publicly shown any ultra-nationalist feelings while a minister over the previous decade.
Memorandum
Dr Kelly has unearthed a 1955 memorandum from the Tomás Ó Cléirigh Fianna Fáil cumann of which Haughey was a prominent member. The document, which he may drafted himself, “offered an aggressive case as to why Fianna Fáil should use physical force to secure Irish unity”.
Then there was the incident on VE Day in May 1945 when Haughey, as a UCD student, took part in the rioting outside Trinity College where the Irish flag was burned on the roof.
These incidents showed Haughey’s bitter feelings about Partition before they went underground as his political career advanced and he married Maureen Lemass whose father, Seán, had long since moved away from violent irredentism.
But when he did eventually become Taoiseach himself in 1979 with the help of anti-Partitionist die-hards then gunning for Jack Lynch, Haughey floundered when confronted with unionist intransigeance.
He could no longer espouse violence in his quest for a unitary state, yet he had no idea how to win unionist consent for a united Ireland, and almost certainly knew that he never could. Instead he would persuade London to hand over the troublesome Six Counties.
This was never on, but he tried wooing Margaret Thatcher with the silver teapot in 1980 and won her reluctant agreement to have dealings over “the totality of relationships” which was a bit like “whatever you’re having yourself”. For her, Northern Ireland would stay “part of the United Kingdom”, full stop.
In opposition, Haughey showed his true colours (or his “deepest feelings” as Dr Kelly would have it). He denounced the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement negotiated by his successor, Garret FitzGerald, as an abandonment of the aim of Irish unity.
Blunder
Even his Fianna Fáil followers were amazed, especially as the Northern unionists saw it as a sell-out and letting the south in by the back door. It was a huge blunder by Haughey and when he returned to power in 1987 he sheepishly had to accept and work the agreement.
And now he had to deal with a Thatcher who would never forgive him for his role during the Falklands war in 1982 when he refused to back EEC sanctions against Argentina because of Irish neutrality. This was the neutrality he was ready to jettison for NATO membership if Britain would withdraw from Northern Ireland, now available diplomatic records reveal.
The author believes too little credit is given to Haughey for agreeing to secret talks in 1986 between Gerry Adams and Fianna Fail with the Redemptorist priest, Fr Alec Reid, as a go-between.
Haughey, who was soon to become Taoiseach again in 1987, would not risk being seen as talking to Adams, given his Arms Crisis past and he was certainly right. But he did authorise his invaluable advisor, Martin Mansergh, to keep in contact. Haughey also approved of John Hume secretly negotiating with Adams to find a formula for peace in Northern Ireland.
Peace process
When this peace process flowered six years later in the Good Friday Agreement, Haughey had no time for it, perhaps because it was Albert Reynolds and Bertie Ahern who pulled it off through their tortuous negotiations with Adams, John Majorw and Tony Blair. Both British politicians however paid tribute to Haughey for his early role in the process, but only after he died in 2006.
The author sums up his book as arguing that Charles Haughey’s record on the North was “a combination of ideological republicanism, ruthless pragmatism, and political opportunism.”