Let history judge

The political skullduggery and presumed corruption needs to be balanced against the major contribution by Charles Haughey to public life, writes Paul Gillespie.

“His charismatic, even mesmeric appeal to his followers was typical of populist nationalisms the world over.” Mr Haughey during a duck shoot at Kinsealy in November, 2005.

Charles Haughey's political achievements in office can be read as a roll call of contemporary Ireland's distinctiveness. They straddle three decades from 1961-92, 11 years as a minister and nine as Taoiseach. They are often overlooked by critics who concentrate on the corner boy, on the political skullduggery and thuggery that is an inescapable and abiding element of his career, and on the presumed corruption arising from a lifestyle funded so spectacularly by rich businessmen.

Four major aspects of Mr Haughey's life must be taken into account in any attempt at an objective or balanced assessment of his achievements. In the first place, this cannot be based only on his "guile" and "nubile political skills", in the words of the historian Joe Lee, nor on his self-obsession with his place in history, although these are central; they must also take account of his undoubted ability as an achiever. There is a paradox here, since "the very skills that differentiated him also nurtured the seeds of his downfall", as Justin O'Brien puts it in a recent study of his political career, echoing many other such judgments.

Those skills included a fascination with, and an ability to use, power to gain objectives, but also to maintain a lifestyle that came to depend on having power to avoid bankruptcy. John Bowman, in his introduction to the 1997 edition of The Boss, the gripping account of the 1982 Haughey-led Government by Joe Joyce and Peter Murtagh, says Mr Haughey's response to every potential scandal was: "I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. You can't prove anything." Its collapse in the McCracken Tribunal exposed him to humiliation and public ignominy. But that cannot be allowed to obscure the historical judgment on his political achievements in office.

Nor, secondly, should such an assessment be based only on the two relatively unsuccessful periods as Taoiseach in 1979-81 and 1982, with the unfulfilled promise, the run of misjudgments (some of them sinister) and the sheer bad luck that gave rise to GUBU. It must also be based on the more lasting achievements as a talented and ambitious minister in the 1960s and as a Taoiseach who in 1987-92 laid the foundations for the 1990s boom and established many of the institutions which continue to underpin it.

In the same way, and thirdly, Mr Haughey's role in the 1969 Northern Ireland crisis and the 1970 Arms Trial must not obscure the insight he brought to bear on the national question and successive initiatives he took in office to resolve it. Recent archival releases, and journalistic and political research reveal a much more complex picture about the trial, suggesting the Cabinet was much more aware of, and implicitly approving of, Haughey's activities. This does not necessarily take from Jack Lynch's achievement in decisively rejecting the use of force at the time, but it does underline Mr Haughey's subsequent skilful exploitation of Fianna Fáil's nationalism and the party's ambiguous relationship with the origins of the Provisional IRA.

This leads Ed Moloney to write in his recent history of the IRA that "no single Irish politician did more than Haughey to start the Provos on the path that eventually resulted in the ceasefires". Most of the ideas on consent, self-determination and political co-operation between the British and Irish government that formed the "theology" of the peace process were laid down by 1992 in secret contacts that began in 1987 involving Gerry Adams, Father Alex Reid, John Hume and Martin Mansergh - and before it in the 1980 agreement with Margaret Thatcher about the "totality of relations between these islands".

Moloney writes that "Haughey began the Irish part of the peace process, but Hume gave it respectability". Even Fergus Finlay acknowledges this in his account of the Reynolds government. It is further documented in Kevin Rafter's recent biography of Martin Mansergh, which quotes Mr Haughey saying in an interview in 2002: "I don't want to say too much about the peace process. It's a very crowded stage. What's the saying? 'Success has many fathers'."

Against that, the political scientist, Paul Arthur, is more dismissive, saying Mr Haughey misread the North from 1969, was too conscious of Sinn Féin as an electoral threat, too dismissive of the liberal agenda in the Republic and that "history will not be kind to his stewardship". But his judgment is not fully informed by the revelations on which Moloney bases his book - even though part of the reason Mr Haughey kept his dialogue secret and indirect was certainly his fear that were it to be revealed it would lose him power and destroy his career.

Justin O'Brien quotes with approval Conor Cruise O'Brien's 1992 verdict on Mr Haughey after his resignation: "The Haughey who leaves the stage is a more or less tamed politician, battered into a kind of respectability (except in some financial dealings)" to support his book's argument that "the failure to deliver on issues Haughey had repeatedly deemed of profound importance was perhaps the greatest paradox of his career". This, Justin O'Brien argues, includes the Northern Ireland peace process. But he believes that process "has degenerated into a form of crisis management devoid of principle or long-term strategic purpose", along with the nationalist credentials which sustained Fianna Fail's ideological hegemony and which the party has now lost.

This reminds us, fourthly, that judgments on Mr Haughey almost invariably presuppose political attitudes towards him. His charismatic, even mesmeric appeal to his followers was typical of populist nationalisms the world over. It recalls too the magnetic personalities of Parnell and Eamon de Valera - but also, as Joe Lee puts it, the political fascination, virtuosity and temperament of a similar political operator, David Lloyd George. Another common reference is to Richard Nixon.

Mr Haughey became the symbol of division in Fianna Fáil and alternatively the source of its modernisation and reinvention. No self-respecting revisionist could ignore his baleful centrality in Irish political culture - certainly not those associated with his great foes, the Stickies of the Workers Party, or their ideological allies in Fine Gael and Labour and the Progressive Democrats who believed the main obstacle to political progress in the Republic and peace in the North was his dominance of Fianna Fáil. He was tamed by failing to secure the majority he craved, according to this common account.

Alternatively, only he could have dragged that party through its gradual compromise with the social agenda and associated modernisation - "an Irish solution to an Irish problem", as he remarked about his 1979 Contraception Bill which legalised condoms for the first time when he was Minister for Heath and Social Security. He, likewise, broke the Fianna Fáil taboo on coalition by being forced to do a deal with Des O'Malley's PDs after failing to get a majority in the 1989 election.

An alternative strand of the intelligentsia saluted his commitment to the arts, his pride in Irish cultural achievement and his willingness to involve a number of them in successive governments as close advisers. They admired his bravado and a certain contempt for bourgeois values as much as they excused his extravagant lifestyle. He was similarly ready to take on ideas for economic development by forcing a reluctant bureaucracy to fast track them through an alliance with a number of brilliant public servants. This brought a strategic aspect to his policy-making that provided continuity through the tactical ups and downs of his party and personal survival.

Several recent analysts, not all of them sympathisers, make the point that there is little evidence as yet to show a direct relationship between businessmen's payments to him and individual measures of corruption, as distinct from a generalised feelingthat he was the best man to guarantee the kind of politico-economic system from which they would benefit.

Unscrambling such complex cross-currents in Mr Haughey's career and reputation will take another generation of political debate and historical assessment. It must take account full account of his political achievements in office. It is a list that stands up well to comparison with most of the other Taoisigh, and should be appraised without so much ideological or ethical baggage as in the last generation. Given the shame of the tribunals, his reputation can only improve.

They include the extensive judicial reform he brought in as Minister for Justice in 1961-64, most notably the Succession Act; free travel for pensioners introduced in 1967, tax free status for artists in 1969 and for horse breeding in the same year when he was Minister for Finance from 1966-9, when he also prepared the economy for EEC membership. His political and administrative brilliance was widely acknowledged in that decade - Peter Berry, Secretary of the Department of Justice, regarded him as the most able minister with whom he had ever worked, characteristics also in evidence as Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries from 1964-66.

There is less to be said in terms of memorable achievement from the 1977-82 period. Indeed a common partisan account (for example by Barry Desmond in his memoirs) says the foundations for the 1990s recovery were laid not after 1987 but by the Fine Gael-Labour coalition of 1982-87. It had to recover from the wild increase in public expenditure in 1980-82, despite Mr Haughey's famous broadcast in which he said the country was living beyond its means.

Desmond's claim mirrors the one which says Alan Dukes's Tallaght Strategy in 1987-89, accepting the Fianna Fáil government's severe spending cuts and budgetary plans of those years, were a necessary part of Mr Haughey's success in those years. Nevertheless he led the Government and formulated the four-pronged strategy of spending cuts, social partnership, European Community funding and industrial policy which turned the economy around and positioned it to benefit from 1990s developments. In various ways the formula proved durable and outlived Mr Haughey. This should be recognised whether or not one approves of it politically. Putting it in place involved maximising his political, diplomatic and administrative skills and proved to be his most enduring legacy. A list would include many initiatives ridiculed or attacked at the time but which have since appeared far-seeing.

The International Financial Services Centre; the development of Temple Bar; founding and funding Aosdana; restoring the Government Buildings and Dublin Castle; creating the Irish Museum of Modern Art; running the most important Irish EC presidency in 1990; initiating the Northern peace process; braking the Fianna Fáil coalition taboo. It is quite a list, even if it is accompanied by an organic undertow of political controversy and personal impropriety.