Systematic bullying hallmark of Haughey's leadership in 1982

Desmond O'Malley recalled a dark moment of the Haughey era this week when he described on RTE how Jim Gibbons was pushed to the ground in the entrance hall of Leinster House and kicked by supporters of Mr Haughey, people later described by Mr Gibbons's son as "Nazis".

Mr O'Malley said that "many strange things" had happened when Mr Haughey was in power. The Gibbons incident occurred on the night of October 6th, 1982, after a Fianna Fail parliamentary party meeting when a motion of no confidence in Mr Haughey was defeated. Many strange things indeed surround that night.

The October 1982 heave against Mr Haughey began on the first day of that month, a Friday, when Charlie McCreevy dropped a copy of a motion of no confidence in Mr Haughey (as party leader and Taoiseach) into the office of the chief whip, Bertie Ahern, and had one sent by courier to Mr Haughey in Kinsealy.

The motion prompted an unprecedented wave of intimidation of Fianna Fail TDs and threats against at least one journalist. On Sunday, the newspapers carried Mr McCreevy's view that he no longer considered Mr Haughey fit to be Taoiseach. The days of political strokes and deals had to end, he said.

Mr Haughey went on RTE radio to fight back and tried to flush out his opponents: the parliamentary party meeting on Mr McCreevy's motion would be an open roll-call vote, he said. His enemies would have to expose themselves. In the meantime, ministers lined up behind Mr Haughey. They included Ray MacSharry, Brian Lenihan and Sean Doherty.

Between the Sunday and Wednesday, the day of the meeting, many TDs were subjected to a barrage of telephone calls. The families of Seamus Brennan, George Colley and Mary Harney (still then a member of Fianna Fail) received obscene calls.

Many TDs got calls similar to one received by Sean McCarthy, then TD for Tipperary South. "I got a threat from [name of FF politician]. He told me that if I didn't vote for Haughey, he'd run against me. I told him to eff off," Mr McCarthy recalls. Sean Byrne, his constituency colleague, was contacted by a senior minister who called him `a Jim Gibbons' - effectively, a traitor in the eyes of Haughey zealots.

On Tuesday, October 5th, Desmond O'Malley and Dr Martin O'Donoghue resigned from the cabinet in the face of a demand from Mr Haughey that all his ministers declare their loyalty to him personally.

The meeting on the 6th lasted a marathon 12 hours. Padraig Flynn, now Ireland's EU Commissioner, said Mr McCreevy's motion played into the hands of the British and their "collaborators" in the Irish media and he named three journalists: Geraldine Kennedy, then of the Sunday Tribune, Bruce Arnold of the Irish Independent, and the late John Feeney of the Evening Herald.

Mr Haughey emerged the winner from the meeting, defeating his rivals by 58 votes to 22 - the famous Club of 22, led, in effect, by Desmond O'Malley. Afterwards, Haughey supporters were vindictive in victory: Mr Gibbons was assaulted in the Dail foyer and Mr McCreevy needed a Garda escort to leave Leinster House safely.

"There was a press conference in an ante-room of the Senate," recalls Geraldine Kennedy. "Ciaran Haughey [whose company, Celtic Helicopters, was funded by the Ansbacher Deposits and who is criticised in the McCracken report] came up to me and said `Ms Kennedy, you will pay for this'."

Ms Kennedy went home, and late that night took two anonymous telephone calls during which voices informed her, "We know where you are". On Friday of that week, she dined in Dublin with a friend. When she returned to her car, a broken bottle had been clipped to her windscreen by one of the wipers. Inside was a note saying, "We are watching you." Ms Kennedy's domestic electricity was once cut off. Inquiries disclosed that the instruction had come from Mount Street - Fianna Fail headquarters.

After the new Fine Gael-Labour government confirmed that the Haughey government had been tapping the telephones of Bruce Arnold and Ms Kennedy, Mr Haughey's press spokesman, Mr PJ Mara, told her that he could not guarantee her safety if she attended the Fianna Fail Ardfheis at the end of February. The gardai insisted that Ms Kennedy accept protection. At the ardfheis, she remembers some delegates jeered her with mock Nazi salutes.

In official documents concerning the phone-tapping, Bruce Arnold, who was born in Britain, is described as "anti-national" in his outlook. This kind of slur is still apparently believed by some. As recently as last month, an editorial in the Sunday Business Post made critical reference to journalists of The Irish Times "seeking to impress their anti-national controllers by scoring a hit on the leader of Fianna Fail".

There were many other instances during 1982, all of which add up to a style of leadership that amounted to systematic bullying of internal opponents and external critics. The air of fear and intimidation which permeated the period surrounding challenges to Mr Haughey's leadership was exemplified by the case of George Colley, who frequently used public phone boxes rather than his own home or office phone.

At one stage he feared for Ms Kennedy's safety and asked Dick Walsh, then Irish Times political correspondent, to check she was all right. Mr Walsh went to her house, and outside it he found a parked car with four male occupants. The car left when he went inside the house.

The story will be familiar to some current TDs who were opponents of Mr Haughey and who became used to finding vans, sometimes masquerading as Post Office telephone vans, lurking around their homes. Seamus Brennan, now chief whip, had such an experience in 1982.

Within the criminal justice system, at least one judge was warned by friendly sources within the gardai to watch himself. This reporter had to operate a code system with two well-placed Garda contacts in order to set up meetings. On at least one occasion when discussing the Dowra affair (the arrest in Northern Ireland of a man about to give evidence in court in the South against Mr Doherty's brother-in-law), two very senior law officers in Dublin felt the need to walk around St Stephen's Green for a consultation rather than risk talking in their offices or on the telephone.

In recalling this week the attack on Mr Gibbons, Mr O'Malley said there was a need to purge ourselves of these "strange things". It is hard to see how that can be done other than by never forgetting that they happened and who was involved.