68  February 2016
The Life and Crimes of CJH
Review of Conor Lenihan’s
'Haughey: Prince of Power'
by Kevin Kiely
T
here is something quaint about Conor Lehihan
assessing the life of Charlie Haughey, the man
who stole money from the fund for his father’s
liver transplant and then fired his father as Tánaiste
and Minister for Defence.
Lenihan has pieced together a mixture of his own
memories of the former Taoiseach and anecdotes that
his father, Brian Lenihan Snr, passed on to him.
The reader inevitably looks for evidence of personal
bias on the part of this author and it is certainly a par-
ticular, personal work. This is a distraction because
these characteristics import a significant source of
new material, and new perspectives on old material.
Nevertheless the mainstream media do not seem to
have embraced Lenihan's approach and strangely this
book has not been reviewed in the mainstream press.
The book is easy reading if patchy. Lenihan of
course has a pedigree of grandson, son, brother and
niece of TDs and, as a famously boisterous quidnunc
he exploits it - all.
Lenihan opens by admitting, nay boasting, that it is
rare that an adult life is heavily influenced by an his-
torical figure, but that his
was, by Haughey. The
moral compass of the book
spins unpredictably. It
often lionises Haughey but
also assiduously maintains
another Lenihan-centred
narrative which actually
surfaces only sporadically
and peaks in intensity with
the sacking of Lenihan Snr
and with the loss of his bid for Áras an Uachtaráin
weeks later.
The most poignant page in the book is the last one,
the sole appendix, which reproduces the letter from
Haughey requesting the resignation of Lenihan’s
father. It begins “A Thánaiste, a Aire” and proceeds to
threaten that if he does not resign that Haughey will
request the President to terminate the appointment.
Lenihan reprises a lacklustre recitation of the Small
Man’s biography: son of a Free Stater, Lieutenant in
the FCA, North Dublin ward boss, marriage to Lemass’s
daughter, reforming minister, arbiter of taste (here
Lenihan is too kind). But consistent hypocrite support-
ing Archbishop McQuaid’s banning of Edna O’Brien’s
'The Country Girls'. The man from TACA, the 1960s
Christian Brothers’ Boy in mohair suits doing the
social rounds in The Shelbourne, The Hibernian, Jam-
met’s, The Russell and Groome’s.
Lenihan explains the realpolitik forcing Lemass to
offer Haughey the Finance Ministry and Blaney the
Agriculture Ministry leaving Lynch to see off Colley (59
votes to 19) and become Taoiseach. A brisk narrative
on the Arms Crisis foreshadows Haughey’s first fall.
Lenihan believes Lynch “knew much earlier than he
insisted that weapons were to be purchased” but
“backed off and decided to blame the entire fiasco on
those ministers, and Captain Kelly”. Haughey, Blaney
and Gibbons were “briefed at every step of the way, if
not by Captain Kelly, then by the Army’s Head of Intel-
ligence Colonel Michael Hefferon”. Still Lenihan is
perplexed as to why “Lynch opted to put those
involved on trial in the courts” and adds ‘my father
always said that the main person pushing for a pros-
Lenihan’s biography is
certainly a particular,
personal work, importing
a significant source of
new material, and new
perspectives on old material
CULTURE
  February 2016 69
ecution was George Colley”.
Haughey’s return is well done. He enlisted
Reynolds and his country and western caucus
and was back as a Minister in Lynch’s govern-
ment by 1975. Haughey’s pretensions rose ever
greater: “Some preferred the Mercedes but
Haughey felt the Jaguar cut a greater dash, with
its leather seats and inlay”.
Meanwhile back in the city Haughey’s con-
stituency machinery cranked out cheques and
Christmas turkeys. In summer there was a char-
ity gymkhana (in aid of the Central Remedial
Clinic!) with marquee and CJH in riding gear with
Lady Valerie Goulding, silver trays and match-
ing teapots on the lawns of Kinsealy. By 1979
he was leader of Fianna Fáil and Taoiseach.
Lenihan notes (in a sentence that in fairness he
appropriates from Haughey’s Wikipedia entry,
that: “Within days of his becoming Taoiseach,
Allied Irish Banks forgave Haughey £400,000
of a £1,000,000 debt. No reason
was given for this. The Econo-
mist obituary on Haughey (24
June 2006) asserted that he had
warned the bank ‘I can be a very
troublesome adversary’”.
Haughey’s 1980 Ard Fheis was
“like a Baptist revival meeting
rather than a political confer-
ence”. Then GUBU set in in
1982.
Lenihan surely veers towards
the unedifyingly bizarre as he
reveals that a contact of his in
the Tory party told him that
Haughey was “the first person
to compliment Mrs Thatcher on
her legs” at the Anglo-Irish summit which
spawned Lenihan Snr typically ponderous invo-
cation of “the totality of relationships”.
Haughey’s interventionism over the liver trans-
plant for Lenihan Snr in the Mayo Clinic is
narrated scrupulously with Haughey ordering
Paul Kavanagh who fundraised €270,000,
though “no more than €70,000 was spent”, to
divert the balance to Haughey and his Charvet
shirts (though Lenihan, being a Lenihan, is
much too practical to care, or even mention, the
fetish for haute couture).
Lenihan recounts with palpable pleasure how
Haughey survived the 1991 challenge from
Reynolds (55 votes to 22). Haughey lived
through his dissection by the Moriarty Tribunal
and died of prostate cancer in 2006 before he
could be prosecuted.
Homely depictions of Lenihan’s mother and
her friends debating the ethics and sexiness of
early Haughey mingle with Lenihan’s recollec-
tion of how Brian Lenihan Snr’s hopes that
Fianna Fáil might not campaign against divorce
were dashed by Haughey. Other anecdotal ref-
erences sometimes, though not always, seem
tailored to elevate the perspicacity of the
author’s dad but also give the book a beguiling
sense of Lenihanesque intimate authority – as
when he reveals that he acted as an informal
intermediary for Albert Reynolds in the early
1990s, though he was a working journalist.
There is charming colour too as when for exam-
ple he captures the private sides of De Valera
and Lemass, or remembers a bottle of whiskey
placed at Jack Lynch’s setting at a dinner in the
late 1960s being consumed in the course of an
evening.
He reveals that his father and Ray Burke, of
all people, agreed to fill out their ballot papers
the same way in case they were scrutinised by
the winner of the Haughey-Colley leadership
contest in 1979. Lenihan Snr also apparently
described the contest as that between a knave
and a fool. He favoured the knave. Conor Leni-
han notes Colley’s henchmen could be as heavy
as Haughey’s and claims that Michael
O’Kennedy was pinned against a wall after he
told Colley he would be voting for his
opponent.
He is partisan enough to disdain Garret
FitzGerald’s economics and Northern policies
and even implausibly to accept the laundering
of Fianna
Fáil’s cynical
fundraising
arm, Taca, as
“innocent’.
A s to
Haughey it is
more compli
-
cated. 'Prince
of Power' is
not a bitter
book. Its
judgements are kinder than those of other biog-
raphers. Lenihan takes a conventional view of
the balance of good and bad in the man. On one
hand be exudes “enormous personal appeal”,
encapsulates “a more radical nationalism in the
republican tradition”, and bizarrely even repre-
sents “a Walt Disney cartoon classic” without
specification of which title. Pinnochio?
Contrariwise, Lenihan quotes Bruce Arnold,
whose phone was tapped by Haughey’s Justice
Minister noting loathingly that: “His well-tai-
lored suits conceal a plumpness not unlike the
French Emperor [Napoleon’s]. His handshake is
without warmth or commitment; a soft, limp
paddle of flesh is offered disdainfully…his eyes
are essentially cold and suspicious; the stare is
reptilian”. Well maybe at Arnold, it was.
Arnold’s overall verdict was that Haughey
was a victim of unlucky deeds, poor judgement
and especially abuse of power. Stephen Collins’
‘The Haughey File’ agrees with Vincent Browne’s
assessment that his “public image has been
that of ‘the strong man’. In reality he has been
perhaps the weakest of those who have led gov-
ernments in this country”.
He cites Garret FitzGerald’s capstone
appraisal: “a flawed pedigree…a wish to
dominate, even own the state” and Dick
Spring’s speech about his “greed for office…
disregard for the truth…contempt for political
standards” but allows the works of earlier biog-
raphers, Ryle Dwyer and Bruce Arnold, to
provide the main texture of the book. Arnold’s
reptile endures most indelibly. Being a Lehihan
there is not much anger or self-righteousness
– or much moral pointing; and there is some
sympathy for cuteness and the pulling of
strokes. The most derided flaw in anyone is
naivety. Any personal negativity is suppressed
though he does seem to regret Haughey was
not prosecuted and jailed for obstructing the
McCracken Tribunal.
Lenihan embraces the findings of the Mori-
arty Tribunal and its disclosures about CJH’s
illegal money dealings reaching the equivalent
of €45m, a haul that remains in the hands of his
bejewelled family.
It’s not that Lenihan denies that Haughey
was venal. It’s more that he doesn’t seem to
think it’s that bad to be venal.
Peppered throughout are anecdotes such as
one about the top table in the Burlington when
Haughey demanded homage on his tenth year
as party leader from the sycophants Richard
Harris, Brendan Kennelly, Chris de Burgh, and
Gay and Kathleen Byrne. At the same event,
Lenihan Snr was (monstrously) excluded from
the top table, and instead seated near a vitu-
perative Seán Doherty who called Haughey “a
tramp” and vowed “to even things up” with him,
something Lenihan told him was not necessary.
Doherty of course spilt the beans on the Arnold/
Kennedy phone-tapping in 1992, sending
Haughey tumbling.
Lenihan sees the legacy of Bonaparte minor
as Temple Bar, Ryanair, IMMA, and the refur-
bished Department of the Taoiseach.
Albert Reynolds, a man of rare bad judge-
ment, considered Haughey “a very fair leader”.
UCD Professor Tom Garvin considers, “histori-
ans will give credit to Haughey for starting the
Irish economic miracle that took root in the late
1990s”. They almost certainly won’t. Patrick
Maume’s Dictionary of Irish Biography is some-
what acquiescent: Haughey was “essentially a
technician of power rather than an ideologue
and his inconsistencies must be seen in this
light”.
Inconsistencies, sadly, were only a part of the
problem.
In the end a forgiving Lenihan in contrast
rehearses Liam Cosgrave’s lame verdict that he
“achieved more than his critics”.
A man from Belfast told Lenihan that Haughey
“will probably be remembered as being good
for the country but bad for politics”. He retold
this at the Royal Hibernian Academy to scions
of the Gallagher property developer family and
they “fell around the place laughing at the clev-
erness of it all”. It is not clever. It may be funny,
but in the end Haughey was tragic.
Lenihan sees the legacy
of Bonaparte minor as
Temple Bar, Ryanair,
IMMA, and the refur-
bished Department of
the Taoiseach

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