Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (17 page)

While Fine Gael people were despondent at the defeat of the budget on 27 January 1982, FitzGerald was strangely buoyant from the time his government's defeat was announced. ‘I experienced a moment of total exhilaration,' he later wrote. ‘This was it. We were going into battle on a budget that we could defend with conviction and enthusiasm, both on social and financial grounds. We would be able to contrast our vigorous tackling of the financial crisis and the honesty with which we had prepared the budget against Fianna Fáil's appalling four-year record of extravagance and the dishonest budget they had produced a year earlier, in which spending figures had been arbitrarily slashed without any policy decision being taken to implement these nominal cuts.'

Haughey intended to make the rejected budget the central issue of the election campaign. At a press conference next morning he placed a very high priority on the need to dispose of ‘most of the provisions of yesterday's budget'. He was deliberately vague about his own plans, and he became irritated when journalists pressed him for specific details of how he would handle the economy.

He blamed government policies for allowing 5,000 vacancies to develop in the public sector and he intimated he would have those vacancies filled. He also indicated that he would retain food subsidies that the coalition government had planned to abandon.

Fianna Fáil's newly appointed spokesman on finance, Martin O'Donoghue, was furious that Charlie had ignored a front bench decision to accept the government's proposed ceiling on spending and its projected deficit. It was therefore intimated strongly to Charlie that if he continued to campaign as he had begun, then O'Donoghue, Colley and O'Malley would repudiate his policies. He therefore agreed to adopt the economic approach advocated by O'Donoghue, who was invited to prepare a speech in which Charlie accepted the government's targeted deficit.

‘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.

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 actually 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 –'