Vincent Browne on Charles Haughey

national | arts and media | opinion/analysis Friday June 23, 2006 19:15 by Miriam Cotton

For three weeks running, Vincent Browne has written at length about Charles Haughey in Village, Browne's weekly current affairs magazine. Defenders of Haughey are not hard to find of course but it’s doubtful that there can be anyone who is so clearly conflicted and contradictory as Browne has been about 'The Boss'.

Toward the end of his piece in the current issue, Browne acknowledges the following:

"There was/is much to be critical of about the record and personality of Charles Haughey: the aristocratic conceit, the voracious greed, the hypocrisies, and the legacy of a grossly unjust and unfair society."

However, it is difficult to reconcile why, therefore, Browne can also claim in the same article that 'even the more sober evaluations [of Haughey] were almost unanimously vituperative'. He goes on to comment on selected quotes from an article about Haughey by Peter Murtagh in The Irish Times, to persuade us of the vituperation that he sees in Murtagh’s piece.

Murtagh:

"Haughey was guilty of rampant cronyism", a "cult" of personality" and the "promotion of second raters over others with obvious talent".

Browne responds:

"Was there no cult of personality with Eamonn de Valera, Sean Lemass (remember the slogan: 'Let Lemass lead one'?) and Jack Lynch? Was there no 'rampant cronyism' in the preferment by other Taoisigh of their chosen ones? And the promotion of second raters over those with greater ability - when was this not the case? Look at the present cabinet?"

Two things might strike the reader about this. What exactly is it that is more 'vituperative' about Murtagh's comments compared to Browne's own about Haughey? Secondly, are we to accept the logic that, because other people have been corrupt/greedy/incompetent, that fact somehow diminsihes Haughey's own culpability? No commentator or obituary writers among Haughey's detractors have suggested that Haughey was alone in his proclivity for 'voracious greed' and 'hypocrisies'. It is the extremes to which Haughey was able to deploy those qualities on his own behalf that has angered and offended so deeply.

Murtagh:

"In the various 'heaves' against his leadership, Haughey demanded a roll-call vote."

Browne:

"What's so bad about the electorate knowing how TDs exercised one of their few autonomous decisions, that of the choosing or rejecting a leader?'

Come now, Mr Browne, there is surely a little more to it than that and it's hard to believe that you don't know it. Autonomous votes for TDs within a party-whip system are ever more rare. It is one of the most insidious aspects of our so-called democracy and maybe the single biggest cause for the disillusionment of the electorate with the political class. TD's are no longer able to vote with their consciences on most issues and that must be a significant part of why we have the Haughey 'legacy of a grossly unjust and unfair society'. There is no longer any truly effective way of challenging party policy within the parliamentary system we have. TD's are routinely bullied into towing the party line and the system is now so well established that most of them - in all the main parties - are incapable of representing or speaking to voters meaningfully in case they accidentally contradict the policies dictated by their leaders.

Their political careers will be destroyed if the go against the grain: negative spin appears in the press, they are sidelined and their lives are made generally unpleasant. Haughey's 'conceit' over most issues is accepted and how much more dangerous would it have been for TDs to openly vote against him in a leadership vote. Of course the public should have a right to know but, given the whip system, the public interest is more likely to have been served by an autonomous vote than an open one. Which consideration represents the lesser evil?

Murtagh:

“Haughey demanded a pledge of loyalty from ministers in his cabinet in October 1982.”

Browne responds:

“This was after some of those ministers had behaved with a treachery unknown in any government of the Irish state before or since. How could Haughey’s demand for a pledge of loyalty from openly disloyal ministers be considered a threat to democracy? Was he not, as Taoiseach, entitled to loyalty from ministers who served in his cabinet? Who was defying democracy? Haughey, by demanding that George Colley, Des O’ Malley, Martin O’ Donoghue and the others abide by the democratic decision of the party in December 1979? Or those who fought relentlessly to overturn that democratic decision?"

This is extraordinary. The democratic decision of 1979 was not for the blind obedience of cabinet ministers to the voracious greed and hypocrisies of Charles Haughey, it was for a leader who was expected to conduct government affairs in the best interests of the country. Remember too that this the period in which rights to all our national resources were secretly given away by Haughey. Should we understand that, if any cabinet minister were to approach Browne with evidence of greed and hypocrisy by Bertie Ahern, he would send him or her packing with an admonishment to place their party leader above all other consideration? Surely it is the greed and hypocrisy of Haughey that is the real treachery? No doubt those ministers were not entirely without personal motives, but, as history since proved, there was ample reason for resorting to the press. How much more apparent to them can the danger of Haughey’s leadership have been? What is the function of the press if not to hold powerful people and interests to account?

Murtagh:

“Haughey complained to the then publisher of the Sunday Tribune, Hugh McLaughlin, about articles written by the paper’s by then political correspondent, Geraldine Kennedy (now editor of the Irish Times) clearly based on information she was receiving from cabinet ministers who were trying to subvert him as Taoiseach. He asked him to find out who Geraldine Kennedy’s contacts were.”

Browne responds:

“Accepting he made the representations mentioned, how heinous is that, especially in the context of the treachery mentioned above?"

How can any journalist write this and not see it as an offence against one of the cornerstones of journalistic integrity: protecting your sources? Does the ‘treachery’ not lie in that, rather than in the exposure of Haughey’s wrong-doing? Does it not occur to Browne that of course these ministers knew they were taking extraordinary measures against an extraordinary Taoiseach – and deservedly so?

Murtagh:

“Haughey’s Minister for justice, Sean Doherty, had taken legal advice “as to whether he could have a number of Fianna Fail TDs or senators arrested en route to Leinster House to prevent them voting against Haughey during heaves against his leadership”.

Browne responds:

“If this were true, then, certainly, there would be a basis for Peter Murtagh’s claim that Haughey’s government of 1982 represented a threat to democracy. But is it true?
Why would Doherty or anyone else want to have Fianna Fail senators arrested to prevent them voting against Haughey in a leadership election, when they had no vote in leadership elections? Curious that in making such a serious accusation about Haughey he would be seen to exaggerate by far the most important point.
But that aside, if it was true that Doherty was examining the possibility of having Fianna Fail TD’s arrested, one would have thought this would have featured prominently in The Boss (the 1997 book by Peter Murtagh, Joe Joyce and John Bowman). Disappointingly the only similar reference in The Boss I can discover is on page 292, a single sentence published within brackets: “(Sean Doherty’s period as justice minister had taught him that,unfortunately, TDs would not be arrested on their way to Leinster House for a Dail vote.)”, not a Fianna Fail leadership vote.
Strange that he makes nothing of this in the book, just 26 words, but this is bumped up to 63 words in the post-Haughey article, with far punchier detail.
Odd that.”

Well, Mr Murtagh might reply in Village to that seeming inconsistency, is all one can say. On the face of it ,however, it seems that he may simply have inadvertently used the word ‘senators’ when he meant to say ‘TDs’. In which case it is pretty damning stuff - sheer thuggery.

Murtagh:

“When Haughey won a leadership vote in October 1982, the former Minister for Defence and Agriculture, Jim Gibbons ‘was attacked by an number of drunken Haughey supporters and forced to the ground where he was punched and kicked inside the precincts of the Oireachtas.”

Browne responds:

“Pretty dramatic and terrifying stuff. Certainly deplorable. But even if it were true, how would that suggest the gravest threat to democracy the State has known, and how does Charlie Haughey get blamed for what a few of his drunken supporters did in the heat of the moment?
In The Boss, a book Peter Murtagh co-authored, there is a reference to this episode on page 265. It says simply: ‘In the carpark outside the [Dail], the Haughey supporters waited to give their opinions of [Haughey’s] opponents. Jim Gibbons was struck by one of them as he made his way to the car.
I think it is true that Jim Gibbons was felled by a kick from one Haughe’ys drunken supporters (someone known, incidentally, to Peter Murtagh, and from whom he could have obtained the full story of what happened that evening). In the book the incident is presented as fairly trivial. In the article it is puffed up into a threat against democracy.”

Has Browne completely lost the plot at this point? Is he seriously asking us to accept that it’s not a major democratic issue if elected representatives are physically and brutally assaulted for voting as they wish? In what way does he mean the incident was ‘deplorable’ if not in that? This is the very worst sort of intimidation and the incident goes a long way to exposing the nature of the Haughey cabal of the time. What would Browne’s take be on a comparable incident involving Gardai and witnesses giving evidence against them? Would it make the front cover of Village? You betcha, and rightly so.

Browne then goes on to offer a commentary :

“The Haughey government of 1982, had it been allowed to remain in office and had it not been sabotaged from within, could have been the most effective government the country had known. Having carried on a recklessness that marked his period in opposition from July 1981 to February 1982, Haughey began to get hold of affairs from July 1982 onwards. He and his Minister for Finance, Ray MacSharry, along with the likes of Padraig O hUigin in the Taoiseach’s department, drafted a programme for government. ‘The Way Forward’. Its purpose was to outline a way out of the economic mess that resulted primarily from the 1977 Fianna Fail manifesto (the creation of Jack Lynch, Martin O’ Donoghue, George Colley and Des o’ Malley), the disastrous period of government from 1977 to 1979, and the recklessness of Haughey’s first administration.

Essentially what Haughey was attempting to do in 1982 was what he did in 1987. Had he been allowed get on with that in 1982, it could have spared the country and its people a great deal of avoidable misery.

Instead, hysterical crises were invented from nothings and that Haughey government was replaced by the Fine Gael-Labour government of 1982 to 1987, which, because of internal divisions, was hamstrung.

There was/is much to be critical of about the record and personality of Charles Haughey: the aristocratic conceit, the voracious greed, the hypocrisies, and the legacy of a grossly unjust and unfair society. But that is not all the story. Others, many others (most of us?), are guilty of conceit, greed and hypocrisy too and it would be absurd to charge Haughey alone with the legacy of an unjust society – that is a legacy of our political culture.

But there was also to Haughey his humour, his kindness, his astonishing talents and range of interests, his decisiveness, his impulsiveness, his daring, his courage. And that legacy of the peace process and a booming economy in, admittedly, a grossly unfair society.

And there was also – amid the conceit, the greed, the self-centredness – a simple patriotism.”

How can Browne divorce the fact of Haughey’s voracious greed, hyopcirises and conceit from their inevitable and proven consequences for his government’s administration of the country? Why does he try to blame those who were trying call a halt to it rather than on Haughey's own recklessness - which Browne admits characterised the whole of one administration. Browne seems to want us to believe that Haughey’s failings were a matter of personal character flaws, such as anyone might have. The man was the Taoiseach for God’s sake! It is too absurd to expect us to view his actions through the prism that applies to the ordinary person in the street, responsible only for his or her own affairs. Anyone putting themselves forward for the role of Taoiseach knows that it is the office itself which is, above all, the thing that should not be defiled by venality. What we do not expect is to realise that someone has been appointed who is unusually deficient in moral probity. As for comparing him to other politicians guilty of the same wrong-doing, the only appropriate conclusion must be that they should equally have been held to account and equally exposed for what they did.

Browne himself has a duty to the people most adversely affected by Haughey’s legacy. Unfortunately – and unusually – it is a duty that Browne singularly fails in, on this occasion. Had our national and local media been equal to that duty, perhaps Haughey would have been less ‘reckless’ in what he did. Perhaps, also, the Fianna Fail party would have been careful enough not to appoint him in the first place. The great fear for most people now is that the present Fianna Fail party is fashioned so much in the image and likeness of Charles Haughey, the danger of apologist revisionism arising from his death is horrifying to contemplate. His legacy is that corruption has become the norm. Honesty has been redefined as naivety, stupidity and even vituperation.

Most people will not want to deny Haughey the benefit of ordinary human compassion and of course the tabloids raking over his extra marital activities is nauseating in the extreme. But the banality of observing that no one is perfect in the context of who Haughey was and all that he did wrong, is grossly insulting to the majority of people who were meanwhile doing an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. The typical disconnect between the media-cum-political clique and the rest of us could hardly be more starkly evident in the conclusions that Brown draws in this piece. And in any case, whose ‘booming economy’ is it? Those affected by the gross unfairness of the current situation are enjoying an altogether different sort of economy, and one we hear very little about in the media, amid all the talk of how to spend your SSIA bribe and which country is now offering the best property buying potential for your second or third hide-away holiday home.

We have of course heard in the previous week’s edition of Village how Browne had spent many a long hour discussing the details of Haughey’s life and career as Haughey’s chosen biographer over glasses of wine at Haughey’s own home. The resulting book has yet to appear in print but maybe Browne needs to spend some time recovering from the inevitable over-identification with his subject that has clearly resulted from this and maybe also because it can only have been a very poignant, and affecting time in Haughey’s life.