In 2009 the family of Charles Haughey, who died in 2006, donated his private papers to Dublin City University (D.C.U.). The destination was a natural fit not only because it was only a mile and a half away from Haughey's childhood home in Belton Park off Collins Avenue. But no doubt it may have seemed a more likely home than his alma mater across the city, University College Dublin, which — not withstanding its guardianship of the papers of Eamon de Valera and of the Fianna Fáil — was always more closely identified with Fine Gael and Garret FitzGerald who was a contemporary of Haughey when they were undergraduates in the 1940s. FitzGerald, of course, taught there afterwards and remained an integral part of the Dublin 4 establishment.
FitzGerald's accessibility, even ubiquity, was sharply at odds with the man who sat opposite him as taoiseach and leader of the opposition during the 1980s. In contrast, Charles Haughey, who died in 2006, remained more aloof in his retirement. Though not entirely unforthcoming to those who sought him out — he facilitated several scholars with interviews on certain subjects — he was not prone to volunteering his views unsolicited and there were several areas on which he would not speak to anyone. Unfortunately, these were usually the matters about which people were most curious: first, among them the arms crisis of 1970 when Haughey, then minister for finance, was accused of illegally importing arms for the use of northern nationalists. He was sacked from the government, brought to trial twice and, though ultimately acquitted, the allegations stuck to him thereafter.
Another factor in his reticence to speak to researchers or journalists, as Gary Murphy notes towards the end of his exhaustive scholarly biography of Haughey, was the inevitability with which attention would turn to financial matters. Speculation over how he funded his lavish lifestyle and the sources of his apparent wealth had surrounded him since the 1960s but had overshadowed the last two decades of his life. After his retirement from public life information emerged about his finances which began with revelations about donations from the businessman Ben Dunne and ended up the subject of two tribunals. The first report of the Moriarty Tribunal, published six months after Haughey's death, was damning.
If tempted to try to set the record straight, as he saw it, and to draw attention to areas of his career which were successful or at least less contentions, Haughey ultimately decided upon a course of ‘Never justify. Never explain’. Recently, new work, most notably by Dr Michael Heney, has shifted the accepted narrative around the arms crisis from one where Haughey was the villain; but if he is somewhat vindicated in that area his rehabilitation is as far away as ever, if not further as he is reduced, in the minds of younger generations, to a self-serving meme on Reeling in the years or a grotesque caricature in television drama.
Gary Murphy, Professor of Government at the School of Law and Government in D.C.U., was given exclusive access to the Haughey papers. Murphy's previous work has included contemporary Irish politics since the Lemass era, and he has also written on the precursors to social partnership, so he has a strong background on the electoral and political-economic policy in Ireland which he has brought to the study. The private papers are used liberally in this book. They contain some immensely valuable insights for political historians, among them secret polling data that Haughey commissioned during the 1969 general election which is published here for the first time. Anyone looking at the history of Fianna Fáil will find his activities in the 1950s and 1960s very useful indeed. The first half of the book from early years through childhood to ministerial office were to me the most successful. Murphy's treatment of class, Haughey's background and how that influenced him, as well as how he was perceived, is nuanced and well done. The publisher's departure into poor mouth territory with references to ‘the poverty of Donnycarney’ in its publicity material are thankfully avoided in the book itself, even if the ‘two-up, two-down terrace’ mentioned in an early chapter is contradicted by the photograph of the three-bed corner house in the illustrations.
If the private papers contain occasional gems and some intriguing bits of correspondence, of considerably greater value is the access that Murphy had to a wide range of associates and contemporaries from childhood onwards and include both friends and foes. Murphy spoke to eighty interviewees, many of whom are interviewed for the first time, who provide much useful insight and information. He also had to work through swathes of newspaper sources and a vast quantity of secondary material which is generally weighed up fairly. It covers Haughey's achievements in government, as a minister for justice (especially the Succession Act) and finance (including tax breaks for artists and the small but life-changing free travel for old age pensioners), as well as the successes of his second term as taoiseach, notably in establishing social partnership and helping to lay the groundwork in the Northern Ireland peace process. It also deals with the controversies including the arms crisis, the fractious and rather sordid politics of the GUBU period and the financial scandals that mired his later years in office.
The picture painted is, if not entirely flattering, certainly not as damning as many would think warranted. Anyone who thought of Haughey as El Diablo before picking this up will not be likely to change their mind. But reams have been published that do that and this volume, though enormous, is unlikely to be the last word, as though there was such a thing. It is no mean feat to tackle the life of someone whose political career spanned six decades still less one so controversial and who had such a profound impact on the politics and society of his time. As a chronicle of one of the most influential figures in Irish politics of the last sixty years, Gary Murphy has produced a really valuable contribution.
