ANALYSIS:The big question around Jack Lynch's successor was whether he would maintain a bipartisan approach to the Troubles, writes JOHN BOWMAN
CHARLES HAUGHEY’S first challenge as the surprise successor to Jack Lynch on December 7th, 1979, was to face a lengthy press conference at which he was exhaustively questioned about his record and his future policy towards Northern Ireland. Would he maintain the bipartisan policy which had been painstakingly shaped by politicians and civil servants since the Troubles had erupted a decade before?
The question was of intense interest because Haughey had been dismissed from cabinet by Lynch in May 1970 on suspicion of running guns to the IRA – and when he was acquitted of that charge had called on Lynch to resign.
Moreover, throughout the 1970s he had never supported Lynch’s attempts to dampen the expectations of the Fianna Fáil grassroots on Northern policy. And he had maintained good relations with Independent Fianna Fáil TD Neil Blaney – dismissed with him in 1970 and subsequently an arch critic of Lynch’s moderation on the North.
That Haughey chose to telephone Blaney to tell him of his success and that Blaney took the call in the Washington headquarters of the Irish National caucus – faulted by the Irish government as never critical of the IRA – caused puzzlement if not consternation in some influential circles in Washington.
And this was not assuaged by Blaney’s early claim that the incoming Haughey government would side with the caucus in doing the job which Blaney complained the Irish Embassy was not doing.
The immediate goal of the caucus was to have the new Irish ambassador in Washington, Seán Donlon, recalled. Donlon had been a key policy developer throughout the 1970s, maintaining a wide range of contacts throughout Northern Ireland and – it can now be seen – laying down some of the foundations which would in time help underpin the Belfast Agreement.
Since he had been appointed ambassador to the United States by Lynch in July 1978 he had mastered the intricacies of the Irish-American political scene and had kept the most influential Irish-American politicians “on message” with Dublin’s thinking on Northern Ireland.
When Haughey replaced Lynch as
taoiseach Donlon knew that his position was less secure. The evidence to this observer suggests that he played his cards expertly and used the imminent deadline of a Carter-Thatcher summit to pressurise Haughey to clarify his political and diplomatic intentions towards the Irish-American factions.
What was at stake here was the support of four of the most influential politicians in the United States, known as the Four Horsemen: senators Ted Kennedy and Daniel Moynihan, governor Hugh Carey of New York and house speaker Tip O’Neill.
Donlon immediately alerted Iveagh House that these four had “for some years now and at some local political cost” held an unpopular but constructive line on Northern Ireland in support of the Irish government and the SDLP and opposed to Noraid, the Irish National caucus and congressman Mario Biaggi’s
ad-hoc committee on Irish affairs.
Donlon’s message from Washington was reported by the secretary of the department of foreign affairs, Andrew O’Rourke, to his counterpart in the Taoiseach’s office, Dermot Nally.
O’Rourke wrote on December 12th that the Four Horsemen did not wish that their stance would now be undermined by the Irish government identifying itself with the Irish National caucus and other such groups “and they asked for an indication that such was not the intention”.
O’Neill was also seeking guidance on what he should ask Carter to say to Thatcher on Northern Ireland at their meeting on December 17th.
Dublin was already indebted to Donlon for the intelligence that Carter had neither knowledge nor much interest in Northern Ireland and was totally reliant on O’Neill for his policy line on the subject.
O’Rourke added that such a call for guidance from O’Neill served to underline the singularly influential role he could play, far exceeding the caucus or the Biaggi faction, “leaving aside the policy differences which exist between ourselves and the latter”.
O’Rourke added that the caucus had been orchestrating a campaign against Donlon, including a phone call to Tip O’Neill’s office claiming that the ambassador’s recall to Dublin was imminent. O’Rourke concluded that the department was “naturally much concerned by such attacks on the government’s representative in the United States and would hope that they can be publicly refuted as soon as possible”. The matter was urgent: if “we did not react quickly” Ireland could lose the support of the Big Four.
On the following day, December 13th, Nally forwarded this O’Rourke letter to Haughey with a covering note emphasising that the “essential point” was whether the government stayed with O’Neill, Kennedy, Moynihan and Carey “or let the Irish National caucus say they are the voice of the Irish people and government in America”.
Nally emphasised the exceptional political influence of the four and told Haughey that he had informed Donlon of “the gist of the statement” Haughey intended to make to the Dáil that day. He added that while Donlon reckoned it “useful”, he was “not sure” if it went far enough. The caucus were “extremely slick propagandists”.
On how O’Neill should advise President Carter, Nally suggested a greater emphasis on the Irish dimension and advised Haughey that it “would be desirable if at all possible to fill out the concept of withdrawal a little more”.
He thought it generally “a pity” that the whole issue had come up so quickly but advised that how it developed “could well determine the extent and direction of government influence in America”.
On the following day Haughey telephoned Donlon directly. Donlon summarised the key points for Iveagh House. He dictated them by telephone to the assistant secretary David Neligan and a copy is to be found in the taoiseach’s files.
Donlon first noted Haughey’s outright dismissal of the Irish National caucus: he did not know them and had no intention of
having anything to do with them. Moreover, Ireland was not “a banana Republic” and did not wish to have “freelancers” claiming to speak for the country. Concerning the Big Four he wished to continue the good relations enjoyed by previous governments and was available by telephone to each of them “at any time”.
Concerning what Carter should tell Thatcher, Haughey advised that he hoped for the same relations with the British government as his predecessors; that there was no possibility of a settlement exclusively confined to the UK; that the “festering situation” in the North was a “poisoning element between Dublin and London” and possibly also Washington; and that US investment in Northern Ireland should not be encouraged until “a suitable and acceptable political solution had been reached”.
It seems from this evidence that Haughey in his first week as taoiseach had been outmanoeuvred by Donlon. The ambassador was not forgiven. For the following six months the caucus claimed intermittently that they had the ear of the new administration and that Donlon’s tenure would soon end.
It culminated in what Donlon remembered as a “brief and cold” denouement in Haughey’s office in Dublin on June 24th, 1980. Donlon told the story in this newspaper last July.
“He sat at his desk. I was not offered a seat and remained standing. I was to leave Washington in August and take up the post of permanent representative to the UN in New York. I said that the move would, however, be seen by the Four Horsemen and others as a snub. For the first time in history, a powerful Irish lobby had been created in the US. It appeared that it was now to be put at risk.
“Haughey made it clear that he did not wish for a discussion. He pointed to the door and I left.”
Donlon was now resigned to leaving Washington but when the story was leaked on July 5th such was the furore and such the belief that his removal signalled a shift in government policy that Haughey again backed down. He had been lobbied by Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill and John Hume and subjected to persistent media criticism that the change was a sop to Blaney and the extreme Irish-American factions.
On July 9th the Department of Foreign Affairs announced that press speculation over recent days that Washington’s Irish ambassador was to be moved was “entirely without foundation”. The government had “complete confidence in Mr Donlon as its representative in Washington”.