Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (16 page)

Margaret Thatcher promptly denied there was any intention of altering the constitutional position of the six counties, but Ian Paisley exploited Unionist uneasiness by taking to what he called the ‘Carson Trail' in order to demonstrate the intensity of Unionist opposition to constitutional change. A whole series of demonstrations were organised throughout Northern Ireland to rail against the joint studies.

Intense spleen was vented at Charlie, a long-standing hate figure in the eyes of Unionists. Paisley talked about their ancestors cutting ‘civilisation out of the bogs and meadows of this country while Mr Haughey's ancestors were wearing pig skins and living in caves'. At a Newtownards rally he conjured up a picture of the Taoiseach with ‘a green baton dripping with blood' in one hand and ‘a noose specially prepared for the Protestants of Ulster in the other'.

The bitterness with which Paisley and his followers reacted to the outcome of the Dublin Castle summit no doubt encouraged optimism in Nationalist circles. The H-Block hunger-strike was called off within ten days. Whether the exaggerated significance attached to the Dublin Castle summit had encouraged those advising the hunger-strikers to engage in some wishful thinking is a matter for speculation, but in time it would become apparent that Charlie and company had – either wittingly or unwittingly – grossly oversold the significance of the summit.

Opposition leaders criticised him for not being more specific about his talks. Garret FitzGerald complained that the government seemed to be trying to bring about Irish unity without the prior consent of the northern majority, which he believed was a recipe for civil war.

Yet Charlie made no apologies for the secrecy surrounding the joint studies. ‘ To suggest that permanent officials engaged in such studies should try to carry out their task in the full glare of publicity is nonsense,' he later declared. ‘We were accused of trying to settle matters over the heads of the people of Northern Ireland when in fact we were seeking to set up a political framework in which they could participate without prejudice to their principles.'

At the time, however, he allowed his own people to encourage the belief that he was close to a settlement that would end partition. As the summit had taken place on 8 December, the feast of the Immaculate Conception, Haughey's handling of the subsequent publicity was dubbed ‘Charlie's Immaculate Deception'. He was apparently looking towards an early general election, even though the existing Dáil still had eighteen months to run. In January 1981, for instance, the government introduced what amounted to an election budget which did not reflect the country's real economic situation. He apparently intended to call the election immediately after the Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis in mid-February, but these plans went awry on the first night of the party conference when disaster struck in the form of the Stardust tragedy.

Forty-eight young people were killed in a discotheque fire in Charlie's own constituency. Given the magnitude of the disaster, the remainder of the Ard Fheis was postponed. When it was reconvened in April, Charlie was still talking in terms of an early end to partition. ‘A year from this Ard Fheis if we persevere faithfully,' he declared, ‘we may begin to see in a clearer light the end of the road on which we have set out.'

By this time, however, the political climate had already been poisoned by the start of another H-Block hunger-strike on 1 March 1981. This one received massive international publicity, following the election to Westminster of one of the men, Bobby Sands. The hunger-strikers vowed to fast to death and others pledged to replace them on the fast until their demands were met. Sands expected that Charlie would be compelled to support their demands publicly, but the Taoiseach refused to be pressurised, even after Sands and his colleagues began to die.

When Haughey called a general election for 11 June 1981. Fianna Fáil's private polls were indicating that the party was in good standing with the rather volatile electorate.

With the ‘don't knows' excluded, the poll estimated that Fianna Fáil would get 52% of the vote, which would be an even higher percentage than that which gave the party its record landslide victory in 1977. At the outset of the campaign, therefore, things were looking well for Charlie personally and for Fianna Fáil generally, but the electorate had little idea of what was actually going on. The country had already spent most of its budget for the whole year. The financial position was just as illusory as the promises on partition.

When Charlie warned in his first national broadcast on 10 January 1980 that the country was living beyond its means, he did not say how he hoped to cope with the economic problems that night, but in the following weeks his government indicated it would be restricting the free bus service to rural school children and limiting wage increases in the public sector. It was also announced that a resource tax would be introduced in order to get farmers to bear a fairer share of the tax burden. These were bold proposals, but Charlie lost his nerve.

Tackling the country's financial difficulties by cutting back on services, or else increasing taxes, would have risked short-term unpopularity with the electorate, and that was a chance that Charlie was not prepared to take. His leadership was under continuous pressure within Fianna Fáil as he had never really been accepted by the Colley clique, and he had worked too hard to get to the top to risk it all. Consequently, he succumbed to the pressure and abandoned the various proposals; his government borrowed and spent money as if there were no tomorrow. It capitulated to public service pay demands by conceding a staggering 34% increase.

Some of Charlie's more prominent supporters, like ministers of state Tom McEllistrim and Pádraig Flynn were allowed to announce extravagant schemes. McEllistrim, who was Charlie's self-styled campaign manager, made so many announcements in his own constituency that he was dubbed ‘MacMillions' by a local newspaper. Flynn, as minister of state for Transport, announced the building of a major airport near Knock in his own Mayo constituency. The local airport company was only asked to put up £100 for the multi-million pound project. As a result of these and other extravagant policies the budget deficit ended up more than 50% over target for the year. Having identified the grave financial predicament facing the country back in January, Charlie and his government merely compounded the problems with their profligate economic policies.

The budget figures presented to the Dáil for 1981 really bore little relationship to the country's economic position. It was obviously an election budget designed to deceived people by painting an unrealistic economic picture. Had Charlie been able to exploit the apparent success of the Dublin Castle summit with a good party Ard Fheis and an early general election, he may well have won a majority, seeing that he came so close under much less favourable circumstances some months later. Events seemed to conspire against him, when the Stardust disaster forced the postponement of the Ard Fheis and then the H-Block hunger-strikes poisoned the atmosphere generated by the Dublin Castle summit.

At the beginning of 1980 Charlie had been the darling of the media. But the political correspondents gradually came to the conclusion that Charlie had used them in overplaying the significance of the Dublin Castle summit and they resented being used in that fashion.

By the time a general election was held in June 1981 a considerable amount of the money allocated for 1981 had already been spent and it was necessary for the new government of Garret FitzGerald to introduce legislation to secure supplementary funding for the remainder of the year by way of increased taxes.

Charlie was critical of the new government's economic policies. ‘Our approach is positive and theirs is negative,' he contended. ‘We are development-investment minded, and they are committed to monetarism and deflation.'

People like Colley, O'Donoghue, O'Malley were quietly critical, but Charlie McCreevy, one of Haughey's more ardent backbench supporters in 1979, spoke out publicly. In an interview with Geraldine Kennedy of the
Sunday Tribune,
he was particularly critical of Fianna Fáil's performance in opposition. ‘We seem to be against everything and for nothing,' he said. When asked if he was disillusioned with the party leader, he pointedly refused to comment, thereby leaving little doubt about his own disenchantment with Haughey.

On 11 January 1982 he spoke out again in a similar vein. He complained that general elections were ‘developing into an auction in promises' with scant regard for the national interest. ‘We are so hell bent in assuming power that we are prepared to do anything for it,' he declared.

Bristling under the criticism, which he considered a challenge to his own leadership, Haughey asked the parliamentary party to expel McCreevy. The latter allowed the matter to be brought to the brink of a vote before announcing that he would spare colleagues the necessity of a divisive vote by withdrawing from the whip voluntarily. Before the end of the month, however, Haughey would invite him back after the coalition government collapsed following the defeat of the budget introduced by Minister of Finance John Bruton on the night of 27 January 1982.

Garret FitzGerald announced that he was going to Aras an Uachtaráin to tender his resignation and to ask President Patrick Hillery to call a general election. The outcome of such a meeting would normally be a mere formality, but it was different this time. While the constitution stipulated that the Dáil is ‘summoned and dissolved by the president on the advice of the Taoiseach', this was one instance in which the president had discretionary powers, because it also states clearly that ‘the president may in his absolute discretion refuse to dissolve Dáil Éireann on the advice of a Taoiseach who has ceased to retain the support of a majority in Dáil Éireann'. As FitzGerald had just lost the vote on the budget, the president was therefore free to refuse to grant a dissolution.

Neil Blaney apprised Charlie of the situation and suggested that he notify the president of Fianna Fáil's readiness to form a government. This was a real chance for the president to exercise one of his few discretionary powers because of the numerical situation in the Dáil. If those who had voted against the budget were prepared to support Fianna Fáil, Charlie would be able to form a government. Even if it did not last very long, the party would, at least, have the advantage of fighting the next election as the government party with all that this entailed. It was therefore worth a try.

Although there were precedents for this in Canada in the 1920s and Australia in 1975, it was an unprecedented situation in Ireland. The big question was whether the president would use his discretionary power. Brian Lenihan, who had sat next to Paddy Hillery at the cabinet table for eight years, was asked for his opinion.

‘We wouldn't get anywhere with Hillery,' he replied.

The Fianna Fáil front bench decided, nevertheless, that a statement be issued highlighting the availability of the Fianna Fáil leader.

‘It is a matter for the president to consider the situation which has arisen now that the Taoiseach has ceased to retain the support of the majority in Dáil Éireann,' Charlie declared. ‘I am available for consultation by the president should he so wish.'

Charlie suggested someone telephone the president to apprise him of this statement. ‘He nodded at me,' Lenihan recalled. ‘He has a habit of making requests by nodding his head instead of actually saying anything. I shook my head.'

‘I am not the man for the job,' Lenihan said. It was not that he saw anything wrong with calling, but he felt it would be a waste of time.

Charlie then nodded to Sylvester Barrett, who, as a fellow Clareman, was on particularly good terms with the president. Barrett left the room to telephone, but the duty officer manning the telephone switchboard at the Aras told him that the president was not available.

If this was just a courtesy call to inform the president of Charlie's statement, Barrett could have accomplished this by merely leaving a message without bombarding the Aras with further calls. Barrett tried again later and so did another Fianna Fáil deputy, Brian Hillery, a cousin of the president, but none of them got through. Independent deputies Blaney and Seán Dublin Bay Loftus also tried. Charlie called himself in apparent exasperation and he is alleged to have become quite abusive when the duty officer, Capt. Ollie Barbour, refused to put him through.

Garret FitzGerald had not gone straight to the president, but had given a press conference and was then delayed for a time. It was not until around ten o'clock – about an hour and three-quarters after the vote – that he reached Aras an Uachtaráin.

‘I was ushered in to a disturbed and indeed quite angry President Hillery,' he later wrote. ‘The Aras had apparently been besieged with phone calls.' The president ‘was so upset by what had happened,' according to FitzGerald, ‘that he kept me there for three-quarters of an hour, thus leading many back in Leinster House to speculate that he might in fact be exercising his prerogative, the inappropriateness of which in current circumstances he was so vigorously propounding to me.'

Next day the president in his capacity as commander-in-chief of the army ordered that the Chief of Staff, Lt Gen. Hogan, should ensure that Capt. Barbour's military record was in no way compromised by his failure to facilitate Charlie on the telephone the previous evening. The captain had simply been following the instructions, the president explained.

Later it would be suggested that Charlie had actually threatened the officer. ‘I intend to roast your fucking arse, if you don't put me through immediately,' he reportedly warned. But Charlie vehemently denied this.

The whole affair was really a storm in a tea cup that was of practically no significance at the time. The fact that phone calls were made was leaked to the press, but these did not actually become an election issue until nearly nine years later when they almost brought down Charlie's fourth government and played a key role undermining Fianna Fáil's bid to have Brian Lenihan succeed Paddy Hillery as president. Of course, that is getting ahead of the story.