Somewhat of a sequel to his earlier well-received work on Fianna Fáil policy on Northern Ireland, Stephen Kelly certainly has put in some impressive research in this new volume on Charles Haughey’s attitude to, and policy on, the North. He has diligently mined most of the relevant archives in Dublin and London and has carried out a series of interviews with some of the surviving protagonists, mainly civil servants. These provide useful insight into how Haughey’s administration ticked. There are two caveats regarding the research. Firstly, the paper trail runs cold in mid-1980s and there is no archival documentation for the entirety of Haughey’s third, and more impressive, term as taoiseach (1987–92). Therefore, some of the judgements that Kelly reaches may be revised upon the release of those papers. Secondly, he rarely uses the British Prime Minister’s Office (PREM) files, which offer a staggering level of detail to the historian. Margaret Thatcher’s thoroughness means that there is rarely a document without her signature, notation, and coded underlining. Instead, he relies much more heavily on Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Northern Ireland Office documentation from the British side. One can only assume, this is because the relevant PREM files have been quite well picked over in works by Thomas Hennessy and others. Nonetheless, it is a strange lacuna.

The book traces Haughey’s career and its intersection with the problem of partition from his early days to his death. One revelation here, not widely known, is that Haughey did not support the 1998 Belfast Agreement. To a Haughey supporter, this reflected his commitment to reject all settlements short of unity. To his detractors, it is just another example of his dismissal of anything that he could not claim credit for and echoed his unprincipled objections to the 1985 Anglo–Irish Agreement.

The assertion, early in the book about Haughey that ‘…Ulster … always remained close to his heart’ and that he harboured a ‘hatred for the partition of Ireland’ (p. 25) is also not without problems. Much of this is to do with the relative paucity of archival material on the subject that Haughey has left behind or lies locked in his private papers in Dublin City University where they are not yet open to researchers. Kelly, in his examination of Haughey’s early career, provides three key pieces of evidence supporting his above claim: his family’s south Derry roots and the frequent discussions at the dining table on partition; his involvement in the V.E. day riot in Dublin in 1945 which culminated in the setting fire to a Union Jack on V.E. Day; and, perhaps most crucially, a Fianna Fáil constituency office document from the 1950s which advocated force against Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, the extent of Haughey’s involvement in the production of that document is unclear and its importance, in any case, is rather questionable. Fianna Fáil constituency documents, particularly those on the ‘national question’ on which strong but impractical views were often proffered, usually appear to have been taken as seriously by the party hierarchy as a late evening ballad session in the pub.

By the time he became minister for justice, Haughey’s passion for the north, if it had ever really existed, had dimmed. He had, apparently, little problem interning I.R.A. members during their border campaign, which would seem to run counter to Kelly’s assertion, which meant that when his involvement in the 1970 arms crisis in the Republic broke, many observers were stunned. Haughey had seemed, until then, the epitome of a new modernising, Fianna Fáil politician who sought both national economic growth and, as would become clearer much later, personal enrichment from public office. Kelly understandably suggests that Haughey’s actions in 1969–70 were motivated by his background and concern for northern nationalists. But alternative explanations that the arms crisis was a plot by disaffected cabinet ministers (Haughey and Neil Blaney), who sought to use the 1969 crisis in the North to topple Jack Lynch, an undeserving holder of the office of taoiseach in their opinion, are equally plausible. Unfortunately, there is a lack of a smoking gun to prove or disprove either explanation. Remarkably, Haughey survived this disaster and rebuilt his career in the 1970s by cultivating the Fianna Fáil grassroots, always more ‘green’ than the party hierarchy. The presence of large numbers of under-employed backbenchers after Jack Lynch’s crushing victory in the 1977 general election explains, at least in part, Haughey’s surprising triumph in the 1979 Fianna Fáil leadership election. Backbench dissatisfaction with Lynch’s rudderless northern policy was also certainly a factor in his success.

Indeed, his first major ard fheis speech with its description of Northern Ireland as ‘a failed political entity’ seemed to presage a new Irish government policy on the north. But what this policy was remained unclear. Discussion, let alone decision-making on the northern problem, was opaque. Position papers, if there were any, appear not to be extant. Policymaking appears to have been confined to a tiny inner circle. The department of foreign affairs was marginalised; its opinions ignored. For example, from his interview with the Irish official, Michael Lillis, we learn that minister for foreign affairs, Brian Lenihan, was frightened of Haughey and that Dermot Nally, the secretary of the Irish government ‘never felt fully comfortable around Haughey’ (p. 5). This marginalisation of Nally, who would develop close relationships with British officials, such as his British counterpart, Robert Armstrong, and Margaret Thatcher herself, and would be a key figure in the negotiation of the Anglo–Irish Agreement, provides a good example of Haughey’s centralising zeal, his outsized ego and frequent poor judgement of officials. (See also his attempt to dismiss Seán Donlon, the Irish ambassador to the United States, which aroused the ire of Irish-America.) Likewise, he showed little concern for, or showed much policy innovation regarding, Ulster unionism and its concerns. In fact, the northern policies of Haughey in his first two years as taoiseach appear to have been as directionless as those of Lynch. What excuses Haughey, somewhat, is that the tempest of Northern Ireland in the early 1980s would have blown any Irish ship of state close to the rocks.

The heart of the book, and the most densely documented part, is Haughey’s first two terms in office (1979–81, 1982). Many writers, including Bruce Arnold and T. Ryle Dwyer, conclude that Charles Haughey had no sound Northern Ireland policy in these two terms and in his long sojourn in opposition from 1982 to 1987. From the outset of the Troubles it was clear that one key to solving the Northern Ireland problem was a good working relationship between Dublin and London. Haughey recognised this but as Bruce Arnold elsewhere argues, he concentrated on style over substance, especially in relation to Anglo–Irish bilateral summits. When Robin Haydon, the British ambassador, asked Haughey in 1980, ‘…(have you) put forward any specific ideas on the North, or on Anglo–Irish relations to Mrs. Thatcher, and he replied he had not. He did not elaborate’ (PREM 19/283). Indeed, his plan, if one could call it that, appears to have had little more substance than to charm Thatcher, as evident in his gift of a Georgian teapot and engraved tea strainer at their Anglo–Irish summit in 1980, and then oversell the outcome. The minister for foreign affairs, Brian Lenihan, told the press that, thanks to Haughey’s work with Thatcher, there would be a united Ireland within a decade. This led to a fundamental loss of trust on the part of the British prime minister. Her low opinion of Haughey was confirmed by his flip-flopping on the hunger strikes and, most catastrophically, his withdrawal of support for European Community sanctions over the Falklands crisis (1982), which many observers see as being primarily motivated by a by-election in Dublin that might strengthen his fragile minority government. A stark, handwritten note Thatcher left in PREM 19/1070 in 1982, not cited here, states that ‘events have changed … Certainly I have no intention of having further bilateral meetings with the Taoiseach.’ The cynical opportunism of his dismissal of the Anglo–Irish Agreement in 1985 demonstrated his extraordinary lack of statesmanship in opposition on an issue of key national importance. It would be churlish to completely dismiss Haughey’s record in his third term in office. He made the Anglo–Irish Agreement work, though this was not without problems. Economic recovery began. Moreover, Haughey was certainly more open than his predecessor, Garret FitzGerald, to back-channel contacts with the republican movement. Much of the evidence on this last aspect has been long in the public domain in accounts of the peace process. I was not, however, entirely convinced that the case made here that Haughey’s encouragement of these secret talks was crucial in the development of the process that led to the 1998 agreement. His role strikes me as quite minor. Few historians give Thatcher much credit for MI5 contacts with the I.R.A. at much the same time. Perhaps future archival releases in Ireland and Britain may change my perception.

Overall, Dr Kelly usually, but not always, gives the benefit of the doubt to Haughey’s Northern Ireland policy. And while he is not afraid to point out the alarming incompetence of his first two governments, he certainly rejects the notion that Haughey was purely opportunist when it came to the issue of partition. However, his generous use of recently opened documentation, particularly of the 1979–82 years, could also be deployed to make a very strong case that Haughey’s policy and judgement on the issue were often very poor. As it is, this book is an important account of Haughey and Northern Ireland, and will be of interest to scholars of both the man and that conflict. The release of further archival material, in due course, may bring new material to light that may enhance or damage the late taoiseach’s historical legacy, something he apparently cared about deeply.