December - January 2017 4 1
T
HE AUTHOR is a senior lecturer in the
department of Modern History at Liv
-
erpool's Hope University. He has
carefully mined the available docu
-
mentary sources to produce a book
that covers Haughey's, much disputed disposi-
tion and policy instincts on Northern Ireland.
Given the longevity and impact of Haughey's
career this, by definition, involves a painstaking
trawl through a variety of sources. His cautious
conclusion is that “Northern Ireland, it seems,
was only one of a handful of issues to which
Haughey left a positive legacy”. However, even
this tentative conclusion is set against the view
of the Haughey critics who saw his actions as
opportunistic and maladroit.
The Arms Trial is of course the defining event
in Haughey's career. Stephen Kelly goes a great
distance to establish that Haughey was, how-
ever unwittingly, the person who most facilitated
the emergence of the Provisional IRA as a terror-
ist organisation in the years that followed from
the upsurge of violence in Northern Ireland fol
-
lowing the events of 1969. He states that
Haughey's “subversive involvement in the dis-
tribution of monies, guns and ammunitions"
indirectly facilitated the yet to fully emerge Pro-
visional IRA. The only issue I can see with this
line of argument is that it suggests that Haughey
was in fact subversive when in fact most of the
testimony, research and evidence suggests that
the arms importation was part of a fully author
-
ised, albeit covert, operation of state.
There is little or no doubt, at this remove of
time, that Haughey was part of a plot to import
arms for nationalists in Northern Ireland and that
this operation was initiated at the highest levels
of government and was supervised, quite delib-
erately, by army intelligence as opposed to that
other security arm of the state the Special
Branch. The lack of co-ordination between the
two agencies meant the importation was badly
managed. Kelly appears to give credence to the
line, pursued by the Jack Lynch faction, in the
wake of the Arms Trial, that Blaney and Haughey
were in effect usurping their mandate from gov-
ernment and foisting their own policy on
Northern Ireland.
The problem in sustaining this argument is
firstly the actual jury verdict in the trial
which concluded that the accused persons
did have a government mandate for their action.
The second difficult issue is the copious evi-
dence from military intelligence officers that the
operation was run with the active involvement
of a variety of ministers including the Minister
for Defence.
Stephen Kelly does well when covering Haugh-
ey's subsequent efforts, when in power as
Taoiseach, to develop policy on Northern Ireland
and the famous early summit with Mrs Thatcher.
His mishandling of Mrs Thatcher over the Falk-
lands war and its consequences for Anglo-Irish
relations is well covered. This book also gives
a valuable insight into Haughey's early approval
of contact between Fianna Fáil and Sinn Fáin as
well as the careful cultivation of Fr Alex Reid, the
Redemptorist priest, who became a crucial inter-
locutor in what has become known as the peace
process and the ending, by way of formal cease-
fire, of the IRA's campaign of violence. In May
1987 Haughey, who had become taoiseach, was
presented with a 15-page letter from Fr Reid. The
contents of the letter were groundbreaking. Con-
tained within were the terms of a proposed IRA
ceasefire, seven years before the end of hostili
-
ties in August 1994. Apart from his secret
dealings with republicans, it was also Haughey
who first won concessions from John Major, Mar-
garet Thatcher’s successor as prime minister, on
Northern Ireland. In December 1991, following
three years of discussions between Adams and
Hume, Haughey presented Major with a draft of
a model joint British-Irish government declara
-
tion, known as ‘Draft 2’ which would later
become the ‘Downing Street Declaration’.
Stephen Kelly has set himself a hard task.
John Bowman produced his definitive De Valera
and the Ulster Question, 1917-1973 with the ben-
efit of a PhD thesis and a lifetime of topical
interviews with some of the key people through
his work as a broadcaster before he produced
his book. Kelly has produced something that will
be of great value to others who may wish to write
full biographies of Haughey in the future. A book
yet to come from Vincent Browne is much
anticipated.
My only other quibble with Stephen Kelly is his
claim in a footnote that my biography ‘Haughey
- Prince of Power’ is a hagiographical work. I
might humbly suggest he re-read the book.
Perhaps the best part of this book is its
description of the build up to and the contents
of Haughey's ground breaking summit with Mrs
Thatcher in December 1980. Stephen Kelly
rightly gives the credit on the British side to two
senior Whitehall Mandarins namely Sir Robert
Armstrong and Sir Kenneth Stowe. Persuaded
by Haughey's persistence in demanding that
there be an Irish or Dublin role in relation to the
north, and a personal belief on Armstrong's part
that a united Ireland was inevitable, the two civil
servants shifted Thatcher on this issue. This is
rightly attributed to be the beginning of a series
of agreements that brought both Dublin and
London closer together. My father was hugely
energised by the Dublin Castle meeting and told
me afterwards, on the basis of conversations
with Armstrong, that the British had given up the
ghost on staying on in Ireland. The process
begun at Dublin Castle was a move towards a
joint British-Irish stewardship of the Northern
Ireland issue.
'A Failed Political Entity - Charles Haughey and
the Northern Ireland Question 1945-1992' by
Stephen Kelly is available from Merrion Press.
Haughey cleaned
up his own mess
Stephen Kelly's book is of great value
to others who may wish to write full
biographies of Haughey in the future
by
Conor
Lenihan
BOOK
REVIEW
Kelly establishes that
Haughey was, however
unwittingly, the person
who most facilitated
the emergence of the
Provisional IRA as a terrorist
organisation after 1969

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