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CHAPTER THREE

The Boss: Haughey as Taoiseach, 1979–1980

‘I would regard the peaceful unification of the people of Ireland as my primary political priority.’

[Charles J. Haughey, 7 December 1979]1

An ‘indissoluble nation’: Haughey and the leadership of Fianna Fáil

By the early months of 1979, Jack Lynch had decided that he would step down as Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach sooner rather than later, preferably before the next general election. The previous year, 1978, had been a series of disasters for Lynch’s government. There were three industrial disputes: a national bus strike, a postal worker strike, and farmer protests against an additional levy on their income. In the European Parliament elections in June the party had won only five of fifteen seats. Of greater significance and worry to the government, was the ill-health of the Irish economy, further compounded by the latest oil crisis. Within Fianna Fáil, grapples for the leadership soon came to the fore.

Haughey stood to benefit from this enveloping crisis. As minister for health and social welfare, his stature was again rising within Fianna Fáil, helped in particular by the passing of his Health (Family Planning) Bill in 1979. Famously described by Haughey as ‘an Irish solution to an Irish problem’, under the legislation contraceptives were to be sold through chemist shops on a doctor’s prescription. Thereafter, Ireland became the only country in Western Europe where condoms were a prescription item.2 The bill was a great disappointment to those who felt that Haughey was a liberal on social issues. For Haughey, however, this was a sacrifice worth making as he assiduously canvassed Fianna Fáil backbenchers for their support for his impending leadership bid. Indeed, to his delight the bill’s passing was widely endorsed by the Fianna Fáil party at large.

Thoughts soon turned to who would succeed Lynch. While George Colley, tánaiste and minister for public service, remained a favourite to become Fianna Fáil leader, he had lost considerable backbencher support because of his forcing through of the levy on farmers’ income. Moreover, an argument started to emerge that Haughey had the best prospect of winning an overall majority as leader of Fianna Fáil at the next general election. Bruce Arnold aptly described that within Fianna Fáil there was a growing conviction that, notwithstanding the Arms Crisis, Haughey’s ‘general abilities would confound all his critics, once he gained power, and that he would be a better leader than Lynch’.3 Those who held this view were still in the minority and certainly around the cabinet table, Colley remained the preferred next leader of Fianna Fáil. Behind the scenes, however, working with a small caucus, Haughey began to kick-start his succession bid. As Des Hanafin, a Fianna Fáil senator for over five decades, recounted some years later, ‘Charles wouldn’t have been content with anything except being Taoiseach.’4

Apart from secret plans to replace Lynch, the conspiracy soon made its way into the public domain. The choice of attack was Lynch’s stance on Northern Ireland. In an article in the Irish Times, on 8 September, Fianna Fáil Senator Patrick Cooney claimed that Lynch’s recent policy initiative on Northern Ireland marked a ‘significant shift in Fianna Fáil policy’. He pointed to the agreement with London on security related issues as an indication of the party’s ‘shelving of a demand for a British declaration of intent to withdraw’.5 The perception that Lynch had backed down from his previous stance on this was the excuse that many had been waiting for to take down their leader.

On 9 September, Síle de Valera continued the public assault on Lynch’s Northern Ireland policy. As granddaughter to Éamon de Valera, her comments carried some political clout. Speaking in Fermoy, Co. Cork, at the graveside of Liam Lynch, chief of staff of the anti-treaty IRA, de Valera challenged Lynch as Fianna Fáil leader to ‘demonstrate his republicanism’. Evoking the memory of Republican martyr Pádraig Pearse and his calls to the ‘dead generations of Ireland’, de Valera called for strong national leadership against British propaganda. ‘Men like Liam Lynch,’ she said, ‘were not rebels or terrorists, but true Irish patriots ... who gave us the moral courage to express our deeply held convictions.’6

De Valera also described the ‘so-called solutions’ of seeking a power-sharing executive in Northern Ireland as ‘half-measures’. She called on the Irish government to refuse British requests for the extradition of terrorist suspects across the border into Northern Ireland. Prefiguring Haughey’s future mantra that Northern Ireland was a ‘failed’ political entity, she declared that ‘a true and lasting solution can only be found in an all-Ireland context with one democratic Government to decide the affairs of the whole nation’.7 In other words she was calling for a unitary solution over the heads of Ulster unionists.

At the time there was speculation in British and Irish circles as to whether Haughey had pressurised de Valera into delivering the speech. The evidence is inconclusive. According to Michael Woods, minister of state in Lynch’s government, de Valera ‘had not been put up to her speech’ by Haughey, or indeed ‘anyone else’. She was, in fact, described by Woods as ‘pretty thick’ and had ‘completely misunderstood the various opinion papers which had been submitted to th[e] Fianna Fáil study group on Northern Ireland’.8 Conor Cruise O’Brien, a lifelong critic of Haughey, believed however that his nemesis had played a role in devising the speech as part of his campaign to challenge Lynch for the Fianna Fáil leadership. De Valera’s speech, O’Brien noted, had ‘put the cat among the pigeons’.9

Privately, the British were of the understanding that Haughey had played a part in de Valera’s speech. Although admitting that they did not have ‘firm proof’, the available evidence suggested that he was ‘manipulating Miss de Valera … and others from behind the scenes …’.10 In British eyes the speech was viewed as representing ‘the natural expression of Fianna Fáil’s essential and deep-rooted nationalism in reaction to the Taoiseach’s more recent more moderate public posture’. De Valera’s comments had demonstrated that Lynch was only able to take his party ‘so far along the patch of moderation’ before the Fianna Fáil rank and file began to ‘raise objections’.11

In fact, the British Embassy in Dublin reported that Pádraig Ó hAnnracháin, senior official within the Department of the Taoiseach, wrote de Valera’s speech. He had previously served as Éamon de Valera’s private secretary (1950–54) and was believed to be the ‘only civil servant trusted by Haughey’ (there is no supporting evidence to sustain this claim).12

In the aftermath of her speech, de Valera attempted to assure Fianna Fáil supporters that ‘there is absolutely no division … In Fianna Fáil we all believe in the one thing’.13 In reality nothing could be further from the truth. The speech, to quote the Irish Times, was ‘a direct challenge to Mr Lynch and his policy on the North, whatever that may be’.14 Not only had the speech not been sanctioned by the Fianna Fáil party whip, but its contents had not been approved by Lynch. The taoiseach was furious and immediately condemned de Valera’s comments. On the same day that his unruly backbencher delivered her address, Lynch issued a public statement categorically stating that his government supported the policy of establishing a devolved administration in Northern Ireland, with the ultimate ambition, albeit a long-term solution, of securing a united Ireland.15

Privately, Lynch informed de Valera that her speech was ‘contrary to Government policy, wrong, unhelpful and untimely’.16 At a subsequent meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party in late September de Valera was forced to withdraw ‘any criticism of party policy on Northern Ireland and of the party leadership …’.17 At this meeting it was also agreed that the Fianna Fáil party ‘unanimously adopted a motion supporting party policy [on Northern Ireland] as expressed by the Taoiseach’.18 It seemed, for the time being at least, that Lynch had once more reaffirmed his Northern Ireland policy.

A week on from his confrontation with de Valera, Lynch wrote to his trusted friend and advisor on Northern Ireland Thomas Kenneth (T.K.) Whitaker. In reference to de Valera’s comments, Lynch wrote: ‘No doubt you have noted that the subject matter of that speech was the antithesis of the suggestions contained in your letter.’ ‘Unfortunately,’ Lynch said, ‘I took the rather unusual action of a public rebuke’ of his backbencher.19 Several days earlier, on 5 September, Whitaker wrote to Lynch to express his anxiety at the ‘apparent hardening of the Fianna Fáil line represented by the vote for [Neil] Blaney’s motion on the Sunningdale Agreement, the Policy Statement of 1975, the implications in the Manifesto that the aim is exclusively a unitary Irish Republic and various other indications’. Echoing what Lynch felt in private but was afraid to say in public, Whitaker noted that ‘I would rather not hear again any calls for declarations of British intent to withdraw; whatever, they may be intended to mean, however carefully they are phrased, they are too close for comfort to the IRA’s “Brits Out”.’20

Under pressure from the extremists within Fianna Fáil, Lynch felt unable to heed Whitaker’s advice. Rather, on 23 September, during a speech in Waterville, Co. Kerry, the taoiseach said that a British declaration of its intent to withdraw from Northern Ireland would ‘be helpful’. He spoke of the Irish government’s anxiety towards having a meaningful role in the future of Northern Ireland and for the restoration of a devolved government. He also called on the British government to make a declaration of their ‘willingness to encourage Irish unity …’. Furthermore, he reaffirmed his government’s opposition to the use of violence. He said he wanted a process of ‘discussion and negotiation between those concerned in Northern Ireland and the Irish and British Governments, leading to consent and agreement on appropriate structures of Government’. Irish unity, he conceded, was a long-term aspiration rather than an ‘immediate policy’.21

Lynch’s comments, to quote the Irish Independent, represented ‘the face of realism’.22 Although the taoiseach had noted that a British declaration of its intent to withdrawal from Northern Ireland would ‘be helpful’, his comments demonstrated that in the immediate term the Fianna Fáil government’s Northern Ireland policy was focused on the acceptance of an internal settlement in Northern Ireland. A British declaration, he had subtly suggested, could come thereafter. Addressing a heated meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party on 28 September, at which several ministers, TDs and senators spoke, but not Haughey, Lynch once again ‘reiterated party policy on Northern Ireland emphasising the consistency of Fianna Fáil policy both at present and during the time of his two predecessors in office’. ‘At all times,’ a clearly irritated Lynch pointed out, ‘this policy had been endorsed by successive parliamentary party meetings and Ard Fheiseanna.’23

Speaking in the Dáil on 17 October, Lynch reiterated his belief that ‘The immediate priority is … to establish in Northern Ireland a system of devolved administration which the majority of people in both sections of the community can support and sustain …’.24 Pressed by Opposition deputies whether his calls for the establishment of a power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland ‘without any insistence on an all-Ireland dimension’ were at odds with the 1975 Fianna Fáil policy paper on Northern Ireland, Lynch was resolute. ‘I reject entirely that suggestion,’ he said.25

Despite what he might say in public, Lynch’s comments were an attempt to distance Fianna Fáil from its 1975 proposal for a British ‘withdrawal’ from Northern Ireland. The crucial difference between the traditional Fianna Fáil call for a declaration of intent to withdraw and that of Lynch’s policy of calling for a declaration of interest in Irish unity was not widely picked up on by Fianna Fáil backbenchers and many within the media. However, what was apparent was that Lynch was losing touch with grass-roots supporters in relation to Northern Ireland. British ambassador to Ireland, Robin Haydon, privately referred to as ‘Sir Spy’ by Pádraig Ó hAnnracháin,26 accurately assessed the mood, reporting back to London that grumblings within Fianna Fáil over Lynch’s stance on Northern Ireland were widely growing. According to Haydon, Lynch’s approach to Northern Ireland ‘no longer reflected the grass-roots, republican, nationalist feelings of his party and laid insufficient stress on the aim of “reunification”’.27