Focus: Last orders for a political legend

The most striking features were that Bertie Ahern, the taoiseach, would give the graveside oration and that Brian Lenihan, the junior minister, would do the first reading. Could this be the same Ahern who in May 2000 accused Haughey of deviating from the standards and ethos of Fianna Fail? And wasn’t Lenihan the son of the man whose liver-transplant fund Haughey had pilfered?

Their involvement was proof of Haughey’s rehabilitation, especially within the Fianna Fail party. The former taoiseach, like Richard Nixon, had been fortunate to live long enough to recover some portion of the reputation he had lost.

So official Ireland dusted off its black jacket and tie and put on its mourning face. Bloomsday was cancelled, by ministerial order. But the Soviet-style mourning, contrived and lacking emotion, enraged many. “The whitewash is in full swing over at RTE News,” a contributor to Indymedia Ireland complained just before noon last Tuesday.

The voices of the discontented were muted, or even censored, in Leinster House and on RTE, but the public eventually got to make its feelings known — by voting with its feet. The turnout for the ceremonies, although staged in north Dublin to ensure the most sympathetic reception possible, was much smaller than the government expected.

“There were more people at his mother’s funeral,” observed a man at the mass on Friday.
Inside the church he was being compared to Cuchulainn by his brother, and called “a man of the people” by his son. But while Haughey insisted he had “served the people, all of the people”, very few of them seemed to be convinced.

SHAKESPEARE also wrote that “the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones. So let it be with Caesar”. But not with Haughey.

The mood was set fast within hours of his death by the paeans of praise offered up in Leinster House to the most charismatic and controversial Irish leader since de Valera. The Progressive Democrats, Haughey’s old nemesis, were expected to offer a rounded, warts-and-all assessment, but instead Mary Harney was bland, Des O’Malley was silent and Michael McDowell was diplomacy itself.

“He was a navigator on the seas of controversy and excited strong feelings and passions throughout his career,” was as cutting edge as the usually abrasive justice minister got.

Among the bigger parties only Pat Rabbitte, the Labour leader, and later his predecessor Ruairi Quinn, dared to mention the darker side.
The media was also much kinder than might have been supposed. Vincent Browne, editor of Village magazine, once had an adversarial relationship with Haughey and would aggressively interrupt Fianna Fail press conferences with questions about the source of his wealth. On Thursday he published a sometimes-moving, sometimes-maudlin account of their final meetings, which included hugs.

“Often I thought how privileged I was to have such access to perhaps the most interesting personality of Irish history in a century or more,” Browne wrote. “And over the years I got very fond of him.”
In The Irish Times, Miriam Lord went further. “He was wonderful to know,” she said. “I was mad about him.”

One of her colleagues, Frank McDonald, was another journalistic titan to give a cutesy rendition of his final meetings with The Boss, involving copious champagne and compliments.

The only prominent figure to argue against Haughey getting a state funeral was Conor Cruise O’Brien, 89, albeit two days before Haughey’s death. “They may give him an army presence — I hope they don’t even give him that,” the Cruiser spat.

As always when it came to Haughey, the public was deeply divided. A poll by TV3 attracted 2,000 votes in three hours, with 69% against the former taoiseach being treated to state trappings. “There were a lot of very irate text messages that we couldn’t read out because they were so offensive,” said Debbie O’Donnell, a programme editor on Ireland AM. “Those who were opposed were very adamant.”

A poll on Ireland.com, however, found 62% support for the state funeral, and Sky News’s question “Did Haughey do more good than bad?” brought a yes response from 52%.

On Thursday morning, AA Roadwatch’s radio bulletins were warning listeners to avoid the Donnycarney area. The media also predicted a “huge turnout” for Haughey’s lying-in-state at the Church of Our Lady of Consolation, and 250 gardai, all immaculately dressed, were on duty.

But at best there was a steady flow of people rather than large crowds. Traffic in the area moved easily all day. The doors of the church opened to the public at 11.30am and the line of those waiting to pay their respects moved quickly from then on.

Charlie Bird, RTE’s chief news reporter, managed to get in ahead of other media. He excitedly told reporters that Haughey “looks old, terribly old”. It was as if he had somehow expected to find the octogenarian, who spent his last years battling cancer, MRSA and other ailments, to be the same vibrant leader, riding horses or sailing his yacht, that had appeared in collections of retrospective photographs in newspapers over the previous few days.

People knew what he meant though. As a female mourner said, the Charlie Haughey she was about to see was not “the Charlie I want to remember”.

Inside the church, people waited to sign books of condolence, before moving solemnly down the aisle and around to the right into the mortuary. Haughey was laid out in a navy suit, blue shirt and silk tie with rosary beads wrapped around skinny, bony hands. He looked thin and drawn and the coffin seemed vastly oversized — this former leader who once inspired such extremes of admiration, loyalty, fear and love reduced to a small figure sunk down inside it.

On Wednesday, former finance minister Ray MacSharry had told reporters that his former boss was wearing a smile of “old devilment”. P J Mara, the erstwhile government press secretary, said it was a “half-smile” that was both “sardonic” and “knowing”. But none of this was evident to the crowds on Thursday. Haughey had no facial expression, he just looked dignified and sharp.

Many of the crowd were elderly and had travelled to Donnycarney using their free travel pass which, as one woman put it, “we wouldn’t have if it weren’t for Charlie”. Haughey, as his supporters reminded everyone over and over again last week, had introduced free travel for over-65s when he was minister for finance in the late 1960s.

Molly Guildea, 82, had arrived at 8am to beat the crowds she thought would be there. “Charles Haughey was the best man ever to hit Ireland,” she insisted. And the scandal of him taking handouts from businessmen? “Sure he was only doing what every man does — providing for his wife and family. Okay, he got some money handy, but the people he got it off got it handy too.”

Fergal Lyons, almost 70 and from the Liberties, was clutching the map of Dublin he had used to find his way. He was surprised the queue wasn’t longer but said “they will come, they will come”. But they didn’t, really.

Earlier, close friends of Haughey’s had been fretting about whether they would get seats in the church for the requiem mass, what with invitations being sent to all 166 TDs, the diplomatic corps and about 150 members of the extended Haughey family. They needn’t have worried. The crowd that turned up for the Thursday evening service was much smaller than planned for by the protocol division of the Department of the Taoiseach. Eventually, anybody who wanted to get in got in.

Even diehard supporters recognised their devotion was not universally shared. Leo Hurley was in a shop when news broke of Haughey’s death, and said “may he rest in peace” to one of the sales staff. “Well, she looked at me and then went into a crazed rant about him. I suppose you have to be careful. Not everyone feels the same about him,” Hurley said.

But some Charlie devotees had made enormous efforts to be there. Brothers Rody and Seamus Carroll, factory workers from Rath in Offaly, had left Birr at 6.30am to be there. They remembered when Haughey visited their town, a small man half running down the street, people rushing out to greet him.

“He was bubbly, genuine, witty and exciting. People loved him,” Seamus said. His brother thought his tax problems were his “private life”, and sure “he fixed it up in the end”.

On Friday morning, Haughey’s funeral was prompting more congestion warnings. It was due to start at noon, but gardai wanted everybody there before 11.30am. Surrounding roads were closed and barriers placed along the route. More than 600 gardai were involved and a helicopter unit was on stand-by.

Just like Thursday, however, the public treated it as a low-key affair. Guildea was again first in the queue. Only a small number lined the route while a screen in a community hall next to the church which was designed to accommodate 500, attracted one-fifth of that.

Even some of those who turned up were debating the propriety of the proceedings. One woman said she was “surprised” Haughey was getting a state funeral given “all that had gone before”. She reckoned the taoiseach must have sorted it out for him, because “he helped Bertie get to where he is today”.

Ray McLoughlin, a retired man, disagreed. “The way I see it, he deserves this. We elected him. He got where he was because of democracy and so he should get his state funeral,” he said.

Sean Haughey’s tribute was relayed by loudspeaker and was punctuated with applause.

“As he moved through the country meeting all sorts of people during his long political career and on into his retirement, my mother used to say it would seem everybody hates Charlie Haughey, except the people,” the TD said.

After the service ended at 2pm, Haughey’s remains were brought to St Fintan’s cemetery in Sutton where, again, only a small crowd gathered.
Ahern’s graveside oration was a simple tribute to a hugely complex man, a one- dimensional commendation of a multifaceted leader.

“He left a huge legacy of lasting achievement which this generation has based its own progress upon,” the taoiseach said of his predecessor.
“Though he always seemed to provoke the strongest possible feelings, with the passage of time, since his retirement, and despite the controversies, even political opponents acknowledge he had indeed done the state some service.”

There was no suggestion, naturally, that the speech Ahern was delivering would have been unthinkable just six years ago, when Haughey’s reputation was at its nadir, destroyed by the twin revelations of the Moriarty tribunal and Terry Keane.

HAUGHEY’S peaceful retirement was ended for good in 1996 when details of Ben Dunne’s payments of £1.3m first emerged.
The former taoiseach could have admitted he had received money from others as well as Dunne, pointed out that he had done no political favours in return and let people make of it what they may.

Instead he denied everything, lied under oath and had to have a confession sweated out of him in humiliating circumstances by Justice Brian McCracken’s tribunal team.

It all unfolded on the eve of the 1997 general election, causing maximum damage to Fianna Fail.
Ahern, heading into his first election as leader, was furious. Speaking to his party’s ard fheis that April, he said there was no place in Fianna Fail “for that kind of behaviour, no matter how eminent the person involved or the extent of their prior services to the country”.

Ahern said he and his colleagues were about public service “and not self-service or the sustaining of a certain lifestyle”. A new set of standards would be enforced for everybody in Fianna Fail.

Clearly, Ahern was also playing to the gallery of the wider electorate. Because once Fianna Fail was safely returned to power he appointed Ray Burke as minister for foreign affairs. Burke’s downfall, followed by Liam Lawlor’s and Padraig Flynn’s, meant Haughey was joined in the rogue’s gallery by several prominent Fianna Failers.

Ahern was in Poland in May 2000 when the Moriarty tribunal made its opening statement. This detailed more than £10m-worth of handouts to Haughey from a variety of businessmen, such as Seamus Purcell, P V Doyle and Patrick Gallagher.

Ahern said the revelations were “deeply shocking”. What had emerged was “a deviation from the standards and ethos of Fianna Fail”. He said it offended against “the ethics and integrity of what our party stands for”. The spin from the taoiseach’s press people was that this was a final, emotional break with his former mentor.

Haughey’s reputation had hit rock bottom. At the funeral of Jack Lynch in Cork the previous year, he had been booed by the crowd. When he testified at the tribunal in Dublin Castle, people threw coins.

Friends have said Haughey was greatly distressed by his poor public standing, and began to take a hand in his own rehabilitation. He briefed sympathetic journalists about his hidden hand in history — claiming in particular that it was he who kick-started the peace process. While telling the Moriarty tribunal that his memory was deficient, he was simultaneously enunciating his many achievements in the arts to a magazine in 2003.

Also in that year his tax affairs were put to bed with a £5m settlement to the Revenue Commissioners. It also became clearer that, despite all the millions the Moriarty tribunal had found, there was no evidence that Haughey had done any favours in return. So, technically, his friends could argue that he wasn’t guilty of corruption.

Meanwhile his criminal trial for perjury had been quashed, following an injudicious remark by Harney. So things mightn’t get any better for Haughey, but they weren’t going to get any worse.
Members of Fianna Fail began the first tentative moves to bring him back into the fold. He had been reduced to a picture and caption in the party’s official history, but now former colleagues expanded the script.

First up was Charlie McCreevy, the European commissioner, who credited Haughey with turning the country’s fiscal fortunes around.
“To Mr Haughey’s eternal credit, and this is not politically popular to say, he will always be remembered as the man who turned the country around,” McCreevy said.

As Haughey ailed, the tributes grew warmer. Martin Mansergh, his former adviser, argued last year that whatever the former taoiseach had done, “democracy was never in danger. Despite everything, much was done in the public realm of lasting practical value. Very few who worked for him in that sphere do not still have some pride in having done so”.

Last July, Brian Lenihan declared that the former taoiseach “did great things for our little nation”. Ahern said on radio that Haughey was “a wonderful person” and responsible for the economic boom. The taoiseach said in an interview for a book that he had “huge respect” for Haughey, who “gave me a lot of breaks and] never asked me to do anything untoward”.

Last summer a four-part television series on RTE put Haughey’s misdeeds into a longer perspective, and allowed friends and family ample airtime to outline a sympathetic interpretation of his chequered career.

Thus the stage was set for last week’s Fianna Fail funeral, the latest in a series of party set pieces overseen by Ahern. Critics saw the obsequies as almost a form of political campaigning, with anybody who offered a negative perspective on Haughey liable to be hushed. Irish people are reluctant to speak ill of the dead while a family is mourning. But instead they made their true feelings about Haughey known last week in a more subtle way, by staying away.

A new definition for the language of diplomacy

“Then why don’t you jump out the f****** window?”
Haughey to a senator who couldn’t find the exit door in the taoiseach’s office.

“Like an auld one sitting
in the bath with the
water growing cold
around her fanny”
On the Irish Times’s editorial
writer.

“I don’t trust anybody who describes
themselves as major, religious or superior”
Dismissing a statement from the Conference of Major Religious Superiors.

“My private finances were purely peripheral to my life.
I left them to Mr (Des) Traynor to look after.”
Explaining to the McCracken tribunal how it was
possible to get money from businessmen and know nothing about it.

“We have been living way beyond our means.
We have been living at a rate which is just not
justified by the amounts of goods and services
we have been producing.”
Explaining to the country that, like himself,
we were spending too much.

“Thanks a lot, big fella.”
To Ben Dunne after trousering bank drafts worth IR£210,000.

“I could instance a load of f****** whose throat
I’d cut, and push over the nearest cliff.”
On political commentators, in an infamous
interview with Hot Press magazine in 1984.

“Go dance on someone else’s grave.”
After surviving yet another heave against his leadership.

“I like the company of poets. They take you
away from the boring realities of life and open
up all sorts of exciting things, sometimes quite startling.”
Goes all mystical in a 1990 interview.

“He’s the cleverest, the most cunning, the best of the lot.”
On Bertie Ahern.

“This bill seeks to provide an Irish solution to an Irish problem.”
On his 1979 proposal to allow contraceptives only
to married couples on prescription.

“A bizarre happening, an unprecedented situation, a grotesque
situation, an almost unbelievable mischance.”
The GUBU events of 1982.