A Failed Political Entity': Charles Haughey and the Northern Ireland Question, 1945-1992

‘A FAILED

POLITICAL

ENTITY’

Dr Stephen Kelly is Lecturer in Modern History, Liverpool Hope University, and 2016–2017 Archives By-Fellow, Churchill College, Cambridge University.

‘A FAILED

POLITICAL

ENTITY’

CHARLES HAUGHEY AND THE

NORTHERN IRELAND QUESTION

1945–1992

STEPHEN KELLY

First published in 2016 by

Merrion Press

10 George’s Street

Newbridge

County Kildare

Ireland

www.merrionpress.ie

© 2016 Stephen Kelly

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Cover/jacket front: Eamonn Farrell’s iconic image of taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey, 3 June 1989. Courtesy of RollingNews.ie

Cover/jacket back: Fianna Fáil leader Charles Haughey at Abbeville House, 1 Sept. 1981. Courtesy of RollingNews.ie

To Jenny

My best friend and the love of my life

Contents

Acknowledgments

Glossary

Note on Capitals

Note on Primary Sources

Foreword by Vincent Browne

Introduction

1.‘I Am a Man of Northern Extraction’: The Genesis of Haughey’s Attitude to Northern Ireland, 1945–1966

2.‘We Can’t Stand By’: Haughey, the Arms Crisis and Political Abyss, 1966–1978

3.The Boss: Haughey as Taoiseach, 1979–1980

4.The Haughey–Thatcher Relationship: The Anglo-Irish Summit Meeting, May 1980

5.‘The Totality of Relationships’: The Anglo-Irish Summit Meeting, December 1980

6.Political Obscurity: Haughey, Anglo-Irish Relations and the Second Republican Hunger Strike, 1981

7.Anti-partitionist: Haughey, the Prior Initiative and the Falklands War, 1982

8.A Unitary State: Haughey and the New Ireland Forum, 1983–1984

9.Peacemaker? Haughey and the Search for Peace in Northern Ireland, 1985–1992

Conclusion

Bibliography

Endnotes

Index

Acknowledgements

Igratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following institutions and individuals: The Liverpool Hope University Research Funding Committee, in particular the Reverend Kenneth Newport, for funding the research stages of this project, the book’s images and indexing expenses.

I wish to thank the various archival institutions in Britain and Ireland; I am particularly grateful to the staff of the National Archives of the United Kingdom; the National Archives of Ireland; the Churchill Archives Centre, Cambridge University; and the University College Dublin Archives.

I must also extend my appreciation to the numerous individuals who freely gave their time to discuss their own personal recollections of events central to my research; they include, Lord Robert Armstrong, the late Harry Boland, Mary Colley, Prof. Richard Conway, Seán Donlon, the late Pádraig Faulkner, the late Dr Garret FitzGerald, Dr Martin Mansergh, Micheál Martin, Dermot Nally and David Neligan.

I am also indebted to the following individuals: my close friend and colleague Dr Bryce Evans, Dr Michael Kennedy, Karen Quinn, Prof. Nick Rees, Derek Watson, Prof. Christopher Williams and my colleagues and friends within the Department of History and Politics, Liverpool Hope University. A big thanks also to the staff of Merrion Press, particularly Conor Graham and Fiona Dunne, Fionbar Lyons for his indexing skills and Eamonn Farrell of www.rollingnews.ie for permitting me access to his extraordinary collection of Haughey related photographs. I am likewise extremely grateful to Vincent Browne for writing a Foreword for this book.

To my family my warmest thanks are offered. My mother and father, Áine and Gerry and my younger brother Conor, are an inspiration. Finally, I wish to pay a special tribute to my fiancée Jenny Campbell. Not only has Jenny acted as my personal proof-reader throughout the production of this book, but more importantly she has continually encouraged and supported my academic career. Jenny I dedicate this book to you.

Glossary

Note on Capitals

Readers should note that, in general, this study has followed the Irish Historical Studies rules for capital letters and punctuations. The use of a capital U for Unionists or Unionism denotes organised unionism, i.e. the Ulster Unionist Party; the use of lower case, unionist opinion, etc., refers to those citizens of Northern Ireland who wished to maintain the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Likewise, a capital N for Nationalists refers to organised nationalism, i.e. the Nationalists Party in Northern Ireland; the use of lower case, nationalist opinion, etc., refers to the nationalist population of Northern Ireland who opposed the partition of Ireland. The use of lower case is, likewise, used to refer to political/government positions associated with politicians and civil servants, i.e. the use of lower case is used when referring to ‘taoiseach’ and ‘prime minister’. The use of capitals is employed to refer to government departments, i.e. ‘the Department of the Taoiseach’ and the ‘Foreign and Commonwealth Office’.

Note on Primary Sources

As a successful accountant by profession, Charles J. Haughey was aware that the most dangerous trail of all was the paper trail. In his financial affairs he always sought to conceal his wealth – he tried his upmost to deal in cash and preferred for others, chiefly his account Des Traynor, to ‘manage’ his financial dealings. Haughey’s reluctance to maintain a financial paper trail naturally found its way into other aspects of his live. As this book illustrates, he was a very secretive, indeed cunning, man. It is for this reason that we will never be able to provide an unbridled story of Haughey’s involvement with the Northern Ireland question, not least when assessing his involvement with the scandalous Arms Crisis of 1970. He refused to ever speak about his involvement in the Crisis, never mind provide a written record.

Despite the many challenges facing the historian when examining Haughey’s private and public attitude to Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations, all is not lost. In fact, this book has brought together an assortment of archival material never before correlated into a single study. It is no coincidence that the analysis contained within this study focuses predominately on Haughey’s Northern Ireland policy during his period as Fianna Fáil leader (1979–92), chiefly from 1979 to 1987. The explanation for this approach is straightforward. This was a period when Haughey was either taoiseach or leader of the opposition. As a result, a substantial selection of archival material exists that relates directly to Haughey’s involvement with Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations during this timeframe.

Under the Irish government’s current ‘30-year rule’, departmental government files from the National Archives of Ireland (NAI), specifically the Department of the Taoiseach (DT) and Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), have proved invaluable during the research stages of this book.¹ For instance, access to an array of files from these government departments enables a fresh examination of the development and implementation of the Irish governments’ Northern Ireland policy during Haughey’s first period in government from December 1979 to June 1981.²

Extensive research at the NAI was complemented with the availability of a treasure trove of archival materials held by the National Archives of the United Kingdom (NAUK), primarily, files from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), Cabinet Office (CAB), Prime Minister’s Office (PREM) and Northern Ireland Office (CJ). Significantly, due to the British government’s decision in 2013 to introduce a new ‘20 year rule’ policy this book has accessed archival departmental files from the NAUK up to and including 1986.³

The availability of relevant files held by the Public Records Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI)⁴ and the Northern Ireland Political Collection (NIPC) held by the Linen Hall Library (LHL), have likewise proved invaluable to this book. The Linen Hall Library’s collection of the ‘H-Block/Hunger Strike’ files were of particular importance, helping to unearth the Republican movements’ private attitude to Haughey and his Fianna Fáil government during the early 1980s.⁵

Moreover, this book utilised the personal papers of Margaret Thatcher, held by the Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Cambridge University. Access to the Thatcher papers proved extremely important when analysing the Haughey–Thatcher relationship during the 1980s.⁶ Additionally, the availability of an extensive online database hosted by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, chiefly the personal files dealing with Thatcher’s period as British prime minister from 1979 to 1985, helped to add a further laying of analysis.⁷

On publication of this book, the personal papers of Charles J. Haughey, held by Dublin City University, remain closed to the public.⁸ My requests to access these papers were declined by the Haughey family.⁹ This issue is compounded by the fact that Haughey never wrote an autobiography or authorised an official biography of his life.¹⁰ Fortunately, however, this book has benefited greatly from access to the various personal papers held by University College Dublin Archives (UCDA), including the Fianna Fáil Party Papers (P176), Frank Aiken Papers (P104) and T.K. Whitaker Papers (P175).¹¹

The availability of the Fianna Fáil Party Papers was particularly important, chiefly those files related to the following organs of the organisation: the Ard Fheiseanna; parliamentary party; national executive; and general election materials. Despite the many positive features associated with the Fianna Fáil Party Papers, a few limitations must also be recorded. Given the tradition of Fianna Fáil not to commit the most sensitive material to paper, a practice espoused by Haughey personally, historians are inevitably left with gaps in research possibilities regarding the development of Northern Ireland policy at party level.

For instance, there was reluctance to record discussions on Northern Ireland at Fianna Fáil meetings of the parliamentary party and the national executive, respectively. This is naturally frustrating. The records may show that on occasions ‘special’ parliamentary party meetings convened to discuss Northern Ireland policy. Such meetings could go on for hours, into the early hours of the morning. Yet, all the record shows, at best, are several lines denoting decisions reached.¹² This approach continued at cabinet level as all that was recorded were decisions made and not the details of what was discussed.

This problem is compounded by the unavailability of the minutes of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party and the national executive from the late 1970s/early 1980s. UCDA’s current holdings of the minutes of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party span from 1926 to 1981,¹³ while its holdings of the minutes of the Fianna Fáil national executive span from 1926 to February 1979.¹⁴ Consequently, an examination of newspaper coverage (primarily by the Irish Times) of meetings of Fianna Fáil’s parliamentary party and national executive during the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, has been implemented in an effort to overcome this anomaly.¹⁵

Lastly, interviews with influential figures directly related to this book were of great benefit, helping to underpin some central arguments offered by this research. Although the Haughey family refused to be interviewed, I was able to interview the late Harry Boland and Mary Colley (wife of the late George Colley). I was also fortunate to interview retired Fianna Fáil government ministers, including Dermot Ahern, the late Pádraig Faulkner and Dr Rory O’Hanlon. Additionally, I interviewed and corresponded with past Taoisigh, notably the late Garret FitzGerald. The inside information provided by retired British and Irish civil servants and political advisors also proved a worthwhile resource, particularly the views of Lord Robert Armstrong, Noel Dorr, David Neligan and Martin Mansergh.

Foreword

There was not a single official in the entire Irish civil service with responsibility for monitoring what was happening in Northern Ireland, from the inauguration of the Irish Free State in 1922 to when the conflict broke in the latter part of 1968 and escalated in August 1969. There was a calculated, disguised indifference to the seething anger of a large part of the nationalist community with the relentless discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, particularly the discrimination of housing allocations, the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, repeated instances of arbitrary violence on nationalists, a hopelessly biased police force, a belligerently sectarian auxiliary force, the B Specials and the oppressive belittlement of the nationalist population.

Instead there was just the repetitious atonement of the ‘evils’ of partition, the ‘right’ of the Irish people to self-determination, and the injustice of British intransigence in refusing to force a million and a half Protestants into a united Ireland against their wishes. This in the certain knowledge, and almost certainly with the earnest wish, that these repetitious atonements would never result in a united Ireland but rated well with a deluded electorate.

And when the great ‘thaw’ in relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic occurred on 14 January 1965 with the meeting between Seán Lemass, taoiseach, and Terence O’Neill, prime minister for Northern Ireland, the indifference to the condition of nationalists in the Orange State was perpetuated. Lemass was dismissive of repeated protests by Northern representatives about the conditions for nationalists in the North.

When Radharc, a television documentary team of Catholic priests, did an exposé of discrimination and gerrymandering in Derry, featuring Eddie McAteer, leader of the (very) moderate Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland, Paddy Friel, father of Brian Friel, and James Doherty, a businessman and member of the Knights of St Columbanus, pressure was put on RTÉ by the Lemass government not to broadcast the programme as it would interfere with the high politics of the Lemass overture to Terence O’Neill. RTÉ complied and never, until the conflict broke, did it engage in an exposé of conditions for nationalists in the Orange State – ditto The Irish Times, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Press.

There is no evidence that at any of the meetings between Terence O’Neill and the two taoisigh whom he met, Seán Lemass and Jack Lynch, that the issue of discrimination, gerrymandering and the general hostile environment nurtured by the Orange State against nationalists was ever mentioned. The last meeting took place in Dublin on 8 January 1968, which, apparently, was a convivial encounter. Jack Lynch spoke of Aer Lingus possibly inaugurating a flight between Belfast and New York, there was talk of co-operation on tourism, on vigilance to avoid foot-and-mouth disease contaminating any part of Ireland, and on the exchange of museum and art gallery exhibitions.

The mindset of the southern state allowed for no understanding of the brewing anger and militancy of a significant part of the nationalist population, whose ambition was not to join with what they regarded as a failed southern republic, but to overthrow the Orange State. Northern nationalists felt abandoned and were abandoned. And that calculated indifference and wilful ignorance on the part of the southern state contributed significantly to the horrors that unfolded.

When the conflict broke on the streets of Derry some eight months later, on 5 October 1968, when a civil rights march was brutally beaten from the streets by RUC officers, the Dublin government reverted to type – it was partition that was to blame. And that blind spot informed the reaction of the Fianna Fáil government when the Northern conflict exploded on 12 August 1969.

Patrick Hillery, minister for external affairs (foreign minister), on the urgings of Jack Lynch, taoiseach, did go to London the previous week to warn Michael Stewart, British foreign secretary, of an impending calamity if the Apprentice Boys parade planned for Derry was not banned on 12 August. But on the Friday before that predicted conflagration, Lynch and Hillery went on holiday: Jack Lynch to a retreat (possibly literally) in west Cork, where he was largely uncontactable, and Patrick Hillery to a painting course in Galway, where he advised his landlady he was not to be interrupted. In spite of their own prognostications, they were both startled by the events when their predicted outcome ensued. Lynch was ferried back to Dublin the following day. Hillery could not be contacted until a day later.

A headless-chicken response to the Northern eruption followed. Irish troops were moved towards the border, supposedly to construct field hospitals for the accommodation of refugees, but conveying to Northern unionists that an invasion by the Irish army was about to occur; that impression was underlined when Jack Lynch said in a television address that the southern state could not ‘stand by’ while nationalists were being murdered and besieged; that only a united Ireland could resolve the festered sore of the Northern state. All this so soon after the cosy ‘high politics’ of the Lemass–O’Neill and Lynch–O’Neill meetings.

The cabinet meeting on 13 August 1969 showed fissures within Fianna Fáil on Northern policy. Neil Blaney, Charles Haughey, Kevin Boland and Jim Gibbons were contemptuous of an early draft of Lynch’s television address and they, effectively, dictated the address that was later delivered. I suspect Haughey’s belligerency then was informed not by any commitment to the ideal of a united Ireland or by apprehension that Neil Blaney might emerge the strong man to succeed a weak and dithering Jack Lynch as leader of Fianna Fáil and taoiseach, but by an irritation with the limp leadership of Jack Lynch – Haughey had been, by far, the dominant presence in government while minister for finance from 1966 until his dismissal in May 1970.

Under the influence of Ken Whitaker, Lynch began to formulate a coherent policy on Northern Ireland – Whitaker and Lynch had become close while Lynch was briefly minister for finance for 1965 to 1966 and they remained close thereafter, even when Whitaker moved out of the civil service to become governor of the Central Bank in early 1969.

But never during all the months of turmoil from August 1969 onwards, until the dismissal of the ministers in May 1970, did Lynch make any attempt to cohere Northern policy at cabinet level. He was repeatedly challenged by Neil Blaney on the core of his (Lynch’s) policy of ‘unity by consent’ and he never directly confronted Blaney or sought to fire him until May 1970. The cabinet and Northern policy was a shambles and that is a crucial background to the Arms Crisis, as was a failure to understand that what was at stake in the North was a revolt against the Northern state with which Lemass and Lynch courted friendly relations.

Throughout the period of the early conflict Haughey never spoke publicly on the Northern Ireland issue, which weakens the theory that his motivation for his involvement in the attempted arms importation was to outdo Blaney on the republican flank – why would anybody support Haughey because of his belligerency on Northern Ireland if they didn’t know about it?

But he did meet representatives from the nationalist community in Northern Ireland and he did hear, from them and from the Irish army intelligence officer, Captain Jim Kelly, of the insistent demand for arms from nationalist leaders, including Gerry Fitt. (Gerry Fitt later denied that and won libel actions on the basis of his denials, but the evidence of his demand for arms is persuasive – present in Fitt’s house on Antrim Road, Belfast, on the night in August/September 1969 that he sought arms from Capt Jim Kelly, there were, aside from this latter two, John and Billy Kelly, both in the IRA, and Paddy Kennedy, a Stormont politician – all of these, aside from Fitt, confirmed in separate interviews with me that Fitt had made this request.) It was widely perceived at the time that nationalists were in grave danger of another ‘pogrom’ and arms were needed to protect nationalist communities.

Haughey agreed privately to make money available to purchase arms and that these would be purchased from a £100,000 fund established in August 1969 by Dáil Éireann for the relief of distress in Northern Ireland. He never sought cabinet approval for the use of the fund for purchasing arms, but then he had been almost a solo operator since his appointment in 1966 as minister for finance, largely because of the weakness of Jack Lynch as taoiseach.

There is also the fact that on 6 February 1970 the cabinet discussed making arms available to civilian nationalists in Northern Ireland after which meeting the chief of staff of the Irish army, Lieut-General Seán MacEoin, was informed by the minister for defence, Jim Gibbons, in the company of the director of intelligence of the Irish army, Michael Hefferon, that the army was to prepare for incursions into Northern Ireland and it was to prepare to arm defence committees (these were committees formed in nationalist areas comprised of members of the two republican movements – the IRA had split by this stage – and other civilians). A record of this is in Dublin’s Military Archives. It states:

At a meeting of the government held this morning (Friday 9 February 70) I [Jim Gibbons, minister for defence] was instructed to direct you [the chief of staff Lieut-General Seán MacEoin] to direct you to prepare the Army for incursions into Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach and other Ministers have met delegations from the North. At these meetings urgent demands were made for respirators, weapons and ammunition, the provision of which the government agreed. Accordingly, truckloads of these items will be put in readiness so that they may be available in a matter of hours.

Jim Gibbons was aware from late 1969 into 1970 that an army intelligence officer, Jim Kelly, was involved in seeking to procure arms on the Continent, and he did nothing to stop that. In early April 1970, Gibbons ordered Lieut-General MacEoin to have rifles and ammunition sent urgently to the border at a time of a renewed eruption of assaults on nationalist communities in Belfast.

On the evening of Saturday 18 April 1970, Haughey phoned Peter Berry, the formidable secretary of the Department of Justice, to enquire if a consignment – which he did not identify – that was due to arrive at Dublin Airport could be allowed through customs on an undertaking that it would go directly to Northern Ireland. Berry was appalled and instantly refused. He had already had information that Haughey and Blaney, through the agency of Captain Jim Kelly and John Kelly, the Belfast IRA member, had been involved in an attempt to import arms, and he claimed he had so informed Jack Lynch. A few days later he again discussed the issue with Lynch, who asked Haughey and Blaney if what Berry told them was true. Apparently both denied any involvement in the prospective importation. At a subsequent cabinet meeting Lynch alluded to the issue, said the ministers had denied involvement and said that was the end of the matter. This was asserted shortly afterwards by Kevin Boland, minister for local government, and Patrick Hillery is quoted as confirming this to the author of his biography – Berry claimed he first told Lynch of the plans to import arms in October 1969.

But that cabinet meeting in late April 1970 was not the end of it. When Liam Cosgrave, leader of Fine Gael, learned about the attempted importation for the first time, Lynch acted and fired Haughey and Blaney on 6 May 1970. Kevin Boland resigned in protest. In other words, Haughey and Blaney were fired not because of suspicions of involvement in an attempted arms importation but because the opposition had got to hear about it!

On 28 May 1970, Haughey and Blaney, along with Captain Jim Kelly, John Kelly and a Belgian businessman, Albert Luykx, who was living in Dublin, were charged with conspiracy to import arms. Charges against Blaney were dropped in early July 1970 and in September 1970 the other four stood trial. They were acquitted on 23 October 1970.

In the course of his evidence to the court on the conspiracy charge, Haughey denied specific knowledge and any involvement in the attempted arms importation. His denials weakened the defence of the other accused, who claimed the attempted importation was done with the approval and knowledge of the government, or at least of the minister for defence. Haughey’s denial also conflicted with what he told Kevin Boland in a private meeting a few weeks before the sackings – he informed Boland of the impending arms importation and of the plans to send the guns to civilians in the North. Boland was appalled at the prospect of guns being given to people outside the control of the Irish government.

Whereas his co-defendants in the Arms Trial had good reason to believe they were acting with government authorisation, Haughey himself knew that while there was a decision to make arms available, in certain circumstances, to civilians in the North, there was no decision to use public funds for a covert importation of arms, funded by the exchequer. By then he probably believed himself to be beyond the normal protocols of government decision-making and thought he had an entitlement to take decisions outside constitutional authorisations. However, it is difficult to believe he intended to fund a paramilitary organisation that would also threaten the southern state – there is no evidence to support that.

The army directive referred to here and in this book, strangely, was missing when the first of the two Arms Trials was underway, and there is some evidence that in between the ending of the aborted first Arms Trial and the commencement of the second an alternative record of the ministerial directive of 9 February 1970 may have been constructed that would have been less helpful to the defence. It also seems Jack Lynch and other ministers may have had a close involvement in the prosecution of Haughey and the other defendants, and that is curious – did Jack Lynch contrive to use the institutions of justice to buy himself time to consolidate his positon within the Fianna Fáil Parliamentary Party?

‘A Failed Political Entity’ provides further insight to that crucial juncture in modern Irish political history, among many other key events expertly researched by Stephen Kelly, and does an invaluable service by so doing.

Vincent Browne

September 2016

Introduction

‘This border is ... an artificial line that runs across and divides in two a country which has always been regarded as one, and which has always regarded itself as one. This border is economic, social and geographic nonsense.’

[Charles J. Haughey, circa 1986]¹

Study overview: A failed political entity

Charles J. Haughey’s presidential speech at the 1980 Fianna Fáil Ard Fheis will forever be remembered for his infamous catchphrase that Northern Ireland as a political entity had ‘failed’. In dramatic fashion, the Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach tore apart his predecessor Jack Lynch’s traditional support for an internal power-sharing assembly for Northern Ireland as a prerequisite to a united Ireland. Instead, Haughey offered his own solution to the Northern Ireland conflict – a solution that showed breath-taking antipathy for the Northern Ireland state and its institutions.

In this speech, Haughey argued that Northern Ireland was a failed state, economically and politically. He stated that the British government must recognise the Irish government’s legitimate right to play a role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. The taoiseach envisaged that this new chapter in Anglo-Irish relations would be facilitated via a so-called ‘intergovernmental relationship’, whereby the two sovereign governments in Dublin and London would come together to negotiate a political settlement to the Northern Ireland conflict.²

Haughey’s dictum that Northern Ireland was a ‘failed political entity’ became the hallmark of his stance on partition until his retirement in 1992. In his interviews and speeches during this period he regularly used this argument to oppose various British government-sponsored political initiatives for the establishment of a power-sharing, devolved, government in Northern Ireland.³ Only a unitary, thirty-two county Irish Republic, he maintained, would satisfy the aspirations of nationalist Ireland. His refusal to consider an ‘internal’ solution to help end the violence in Northern Ireland, even on an intermediate basis, fostered his image as the ‘bogeyman’ of Ulster Unionism. Haughey, however, cared little about upsetting Protestant sensibilities. It was their responsibility, he arrogantly reasoned, to fit into his vision of a newly constituted united Ireland.

It should, therefore, come as no surprise to learn that Haughey wholeheartedly opposed the Irish government’s support for the Good Friday Agreement in 1998. Although he played a critical role in helping to kick-start the early stages of the Northern Ireland peace process during the late 1980s and early 1990s, ultimately, he was disgusted by the political settlement that was reached under the terms of the Agreement. Echoing his traditional cries that Northern Ireland was a failed political entity, privately he allegedly ridiculed the Agreement as ‘inherently unstable, an unstable settlement in which the Provisional IRA [Irish Republican Army] demonstrates its willingness only to protect the nationalists within a failed state’.⁴

How did Haughey arrive at this fatalistic attitude to the Good Friday Agreement? There is no easy answer, not least because of the innate difficulty in unravelling the motivations behind his attitude to Northern Ireland over the course of his lifetime. In truth, Haughey presents the historian with a dilemma – what to believe? This is particularly true when assessing his stance on Northern Ireland. Did Haughey harbour a lifelong passion for a united Ireland, or did he merely use the emotive subject of partition as an electoral tool in the pursuit and maintenance of his political career?

This book answers these questions and other unresolved queries regarding the evolution of Haughey’s private and public position on Northern Ireland during his time in mainstream politics. It also offers readers a unique insight into Haughey’s attitude towards Anglo-Irish relations in so far as understanding and explaining his enduring disgust for the ‘preposterous’ existence of partition and the ‘artificial’ state of Northern Ireland.⁵

A political profile: Charles J. Haughey

Who was Haughey? How did his personality impact on his political thinking in relation to Northern Ireland and more generally Anglo-Irish relations? Such questions remain extremely difficult to answer and in truth, Haughey was – and remains – an enigma.

Although there are difficulties in assessing Haughey’s character, several observations can be made with confidence. He was arguably the most controversial and brilliant politician of his generation. He was arrogant, overambitious and quite often ruthless, and in the words of his one-time political protégé, Bertie Ahern, Haughey ‘didn’t tolerate fools easy’.⁶ He certainly held a Napoleonic vision of his place in Irish history, as Charlie McCreevy was to later sardonically pronounce: ‘He [Haughey] was smarter than everyone else, he was better than everyone else.’⁷ Haughey was also ahead of his time in appreciating the ‘value of image building’.⁸ For someone who never quite trusted the media he was obsessed with his personal public relations operations, which was always geared towards enhancing the public’s perception of his abilities, real or perceived.

Haughey was a politician who, in the words of a less than sympathetic Henry Patterson, blended the Renaissance prince and the Gaelic chieftain into one, a man that ‘did not regard himself as bound by the conventional values that applied to ordinary mortals’.⁹ Although Haughey came from humble beginnings, growing up on a council estate on Dublin’s north side, by the time he became taoiseach in 1979, he was living the life of an eighteenth-century aristocrat. He owned a large mansion in Abbeville, north Co. Dublin, a stud farm at Ashbourne in Co. Meath, and an island, Inishvickillane, off Co. Kerry. He had a fondness for fine clothes, especially £700 Charvet shirts from Paris, and was a known connoisseur of wines. He regularly went fox hunting and kept a Dublin gossip columnist, Terry Keane, as his long-term mistress.¹⁰

To balance these defects, Haughey was also clearly one of the brightest politicians to have ever entered Dáil Éireann, with a masterly understanding of his brief in each department that he served. As Professor Richard Conroy pointed out, Haughey was ‘an exceptionally intelligent individual, head and shoulders above his contemporaries … While he had many flaws he had an ability to take on new ideas at an early stage’.¹¹ Indeed, Haughey had an unquenchable thirst for work and expected others to follow his example. In the words of The Times, Haughey had ‘qualities of clarity and imagination’ that made him stand out among his peers.¹²

Haughey had a certain charisma, which only added to his enigma. More often than not he was a first-class political strategist, adept at understanding the pulse of his followers within Fianna Fáil. Michael Lillis, who briefly acted as Haughey’s private secretary in the Department of Finance in 1967, remembered that his minister was ‘extraordinarily hardworking … most impressive and exceptionally intelligent’. Haughey, Lillis noted, was ‘practical, a decision-maker … who when he had made decisions was not afraid to then implement them’.¹³ The facts speak for themselves. In his capacity as minister in several Fianna Fáil governments, Haughey is credited for an array of bold initiatives, including bringing in succession rights for widows, free travel for pensioners and tax exemptions for artists.

J.J. Lee, albeit writing before the true extent of Haughey’s financial misdemeanours came to light, pointed out the positive features of the latter’s character:

He [Haughey] had abundant flair and imagination, immense public-self-control, an ability to cut through red tape with incisiveness that infuriated those wedded to the corruption of bureaucratic mediocrity, and an energy capable of sustaining his insatiable appetite for power.¹⁴

Whilst such an assessment may represent a fair description of the public face of Haughey, what of his private character? Having read many of Haughey’s private remarks and interviewed several people who worked closely with him, a quite different picture emerges. In fact, Haughey was an extremely emotional politician. On the one hand he was a charmer, always capable of getting people on his side. On the other, however, Haughey was capable of being extremely rude and occasionally vulgar, regularly using foul language. Journalist Geraldine Kennedy recalled how ‘grown men would be terrified of him’.¹⁵ Martin O’Donoghue, Fianna Fáil minister during the late 1970s and early 1980s, noted with venom the extent to which Haughey was a ‘corrupting and coercive force’ within Fianna Fáil.¹⁶ Perhaps Frank Dunlop most accurately summoned up Haughey’s character when he wrote that ‘Charlie’s personality was impossible to fathom.’¹⁷ In truth, it depended on which Haughey you ran into on a particular day.

Sometimes Haughey’s emotionalism got the better of his judgement, whereby short-term political gains came at the expense of more long-term planning. This was certainly the case in the context of Haughey’s relationship with British prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, during the 1980s, not merely when it came to Northern Ireland, but as is addressed later in this study, also during the Falklands War in 1982. The manipulative, often sly, side of Haughey’s personality had a direct impact on his policymaking process.

When it came to Northern Ireland, and more generally in the realm of Anglo-Irish affairs, Haughey was obsessed with retaining control over policy. He found it difficult to trust people. During his three periods as taoiseach he had a particular aversion to some of his own civil servants, principally those working within the Department of Foreign Affairs. In his eyes, Iveagh House officials, to quote one revealing source, were nothing more than ‘gin-swilling arrivistes with affected manners of speech and behaviour in whom he had very little confidence’.¹⁸ Apparently, Haughey once referred to the Department of Foreign Affairs mandarins as ‘dog handlers’.¹⁹

The fact that Haughey did not trust his own civil servants impacted greatly on his sometimes knee-jerk reaction to Northern Ireland policy. In the words of British ambassador to Ireland Robin Haydon (1976–80) Haughey was a politician that ‘holds his cards close to his chest’ and would ‘make up his own mind about the line to be taken’.²⁰ Such an approach at times meant that Haughey could quite literally make policy decisions on the spot, with little foresight or strategic planning. In the tradition of previous Fianna Fáil taoisigh, Éamon de Valera, Seán Lemass, and to a lesser extent Jack Lynch, Haughey always sought to retain personal control over his government’s policy vis-à-vis Northern Ireland policy and Anglo-Irish relations, working within the Department of the Taoiseach. As a confidential memorandum from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office reported in 1980, on the subject of Northern Ireland, Haughey was ‘in personal control’.²¹ Officials would be consulted if necessary, but otherwise they should know their place.

Haughey’s general leadership style reflected his determination to retain personal control over Fianna Fáil’s Northern Ireland policy. In the words of Ronan Fanning, Haughey had an ‘autocratic ministerial style’.²² He had a habit of shadowing his ministers from various departments, always eager to have a say in policy decisions.²³ David Neligan, a senior mandarin in the Department of Foreign Affairs during the 1980s subsequently noted that Haughey ‘disparaged mercilessly some of his own ministerial colleagues …’.²⁴ No doubt, one of the main reasons why he appointed Brian Lenihan as minister for foreign affairs in his first cabinet was because he could control and manipulate his colleague; Lenihan was known to be ‘frightened’ of Haughey.²⁵ Yet, the paradox of Haughey’s character and his appetite for work, as pointed out by Justin O’Brien, was that ‘the very skills that differentiated him also nurtured the seeds for his downfall’. In the end Haughey was incapable of ‘delegating power, interfered in the work of ministers and stored up resentment’.²⁶

In The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli wrote of the qualities needed to become a successful leader: ‘a prince is successful when he fits his mode of proceeding to the times, and is unsuccessful when his mode of proceeding is no longer in tune with them.’²⁷ When it came to the emotive subject of Northern Ireland, Haughey always tried, to varying degrees of success, to take the temperature of Fianna Fáil rank-and-file supporters. This was certainly evident during his involvement in the Arms Crisis and more generally during his presidency of Fianna Fáil. In reality, he was a product of his time, a politician full of contradictions.

In this respect, Haughey might, therefore, be labelled as Ireland’s version of American president Richard ‘Tricky Dicky’ Nixon. Once banished to the political side-lines following allegations of helping to import guns into Ireland during the early 1970s, Haughey made an extraordinary comeback, rising to become leader of Ireland’s largest political party Fianna Fáil in 1979. However, like his American counterpart Nixon, Haughey’s years in government were dogged with controversy and scandal, until finally he was forced out of office in 1992, hounded by allegations of political duplicity.

In the final analysis, Haughey’s reputation will forever be tainted by accusations of corruption and financial irregularities. This was a man who over the course of his political career received payments approximating to more than eleven million in the form of so-called ‘political gifts’ and donations.²⁸ The extent of Haughey’s unearned income was staggering. While he may not have been ‘corrupt’ in the strictest sense of the word, his actions were certainly shameful. Here was a man, taoiseach of his country on three separate occasions, who sought to avoid paying tax by holding substantial sums of monies in offshore Ansbacher accounts.²⁹ In the last assessment the sheer scale and extent of payments that Haughey received can only be described as having ‘devalued the quality of national democracy’, to quote the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal.³⁰ The tribunal’s revelations were indeed astounding. Haughey’s image was in tatters.

Chapter outline

As an introductory note, readers should be aware that this study is a chronological analysis of Haughey’s attitude to the Northern Ireland question. Chapter One examines the background to our subject’s attitude to Northern Ireland, tracing his family connection to Ulster, through to his period as a minister in consecutive Fianna Fáil governments during the early to mid-1960s. From an early age Haughey was immersed in Northern Ireland political and social discourse. His parents Seán and Sarah Haughey were both from the republican area of Swatragh Co. Derry. As a child, Haughey regularly visited Swatragh, spending time with relatives. In later life he recounted with pride that ‘my father and mother were born here…my people have lived here for a very long time’.³¹

During the 1930s, his family home in Donnycarney, Co. Dublin was a talking shop, with Northern Ireland politics the focus of much debate. Haughey’s visits to Northern Ireland and the stories that he heard from his parents had a deep psychological impact on his outlook towards the partition of his country and more generally his attitude to Anglo-Irish relations. As he noted in 1986: ‘I can never arrive [at the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland] without experiencing deep feelings of anger and resentment … The border is nonsense.’³²

As Haughey entered his late teenage years these childhood experiences naturally impacted on the development of his political thinking. In fact, his association with Northern Ireland during the formative years of his life was a blend of republican radicalism, Anglophobia and later ministerial pragmatism. As Chapter One explains, as an impressionable nineteen-year-old commerce student at University College Dublin (UCD), Haughey played a prominent role in the burning of a Union Jack outside the gates of Trinity College Dublin (TCD) on VE Day, 8 May 1945. With a group of UCD students he reportedly helped to organise a march to TCD, with some of his supporters allegedly ‘bearing Nazi swastika flags’.³³ This infamous incident was the first, but by no means last, public demonstration of Haughey’s instinctive anti-British feelings.

By the mid-1950s, as Haughey entered his early thirties, there was little indication that his youthful republicanism had waned. In 1955, in his capacity as honorary secretary of his local Fianna Fáil party branch, the Tomas Ó Cléirigh cumann, Dublin North-East, Haughey sent a memorandum on partition to the Fianna Fáil national executive. A six-page typed document, the Ó Cléirigh memorandum on partition offered an aggressive case as to why Fianna Fáil should use physical force to secure Irish unity³⁴. As it noted: ‘We believe it is the duty of the Fianna Fáil Organisation to provide the leadership in the ultimate quest to secure a united Ireland. Therefore, the only policy open to us, which gives reasonable hope of success, is the use of force.’³⁵

In the context of understanding the genesis of Haughey’s attitude to Northern Ireland, the Ó Cléirigh memorandum on partition offers fascinating evidence. Significantly, it advised that the Irish government, in conjunction with the Irish army, should enact a campaign of guerrilla warfare in Northern Ireland. It envisaged that this campaign would concentrate its resources on one or two areas in Northern Ireland with Catholic majorities (probably situated in Co. Derry and Co. Armagh).³⁶ As is analysed in Chapter One, Haughey’s role in the production of this memorandum provides compelling, if not conclusive, evidence that by at least the mid-1950s, he harboured a deeply held ideological commitment to securing a united Ireland.

However, by the birth of the ‘swinging’ 1960s, a metamorphose in Haughey’s attitude to Northern Ireland seemingly occurred. With his appointment in 1961 as minister for justice in Seán Lemass’s Fianna Fáil government, Haughey quickly assumed a reputation as a fierce opponent of physical force republicanism, helping to crush the IRA’s border campaign (1956–62) in February 1962. A rising star within Fianna Fáil and widely mooted as a future party leader, he endorsed Lemass’s conciliatory, non-violent, approach towards Ulster Unionism, based on economic co-operation between Dublin and Belfast. Although during this period Haughey often referred to the deep resentment felt by the people in the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland because of the maintenance of partition, he condemned as ‘foolish’ any attempts to secure a united Ireland by force.³⁷

At first glance, it therefore seemed that on entering his early forties Haughey had abandoned his youthful anti-partitionist republicanism. Yet, as was the nature of Haughey’s political life sometimes the reality of the situation was not as one first expected. In fact, it is argued that Haughey’s support for the Lemass-led government’s conciliatory Northern Ireland policy during the 1960s, should not suggest that his deep-rooted commitment for the attainment of a united Ireland had waned. On the contrary, as an ambitious minister ascending the Fianna Fáil ladder, Haughey decided to bide his time, to hide from public glare his fundamental opposition to the Northern Ireland state. It was not until the outbreak of the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland in the summer of 1969 that Haughey’s anti-partitionism was reignited.

Chapter Two explores the defining moment in Haughey’s political career: his role in the so-called ‘Arms Crisis’ from 1969 to 1970. As is argued, this was a pivotal event, not only for Haughey personally, but also for the Fianna Fáil organisation at large, which almost imploded during this debacle. In the words of Tom Garvin during these turbulent years Fianna Fáil ‘went through the political equivalent of a nervous breakdown’.³⁸ What of Haughey’s role during the Arms Crisis? Although nearly half a century has passed a lively, indeed at times acrimonious, debate continues to engulf the discourse surrounding the part played by him in this affair. Whilst Haughey’s motivations will forever remain unclear, the fact is that in his capacity as minister for finance, and chairman of an Irish government sponsored sub-committee with control of a ‘special Northern Ireland relief fund’, he played a crucial role in helping to supply Northern Irish nationalists with guns and ammunition.³⁹

This chapter provides compelling, if not conclusive, evidence that Haughey was fully aware that senior figures within the Irish state, including members of Irish Military Intelligence (IMI), were involved in attempts to import weapons into Ireland. Indeed, it is argued that Haughey was at the centre of these activities. To put it crudely his fingerprints are all over the Arms Crisis. Not only that, it is also claimed that Haughey, albeit indirectly, played a role in helping to establish the nascent Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA). While it may never have been his intention to bring the PIRA into being, the fact remains that his subversive involvement in the distribution of monies, guns and ammunitions, indirectly facilitated the emergence of this terrorist organisation. To argue otherwise is counterfactual.

In the words of Vincent Browne, Haughey’s behaviour and actions during the course of this affair was ‘almost entirely reprehensible’. Haughey ‘arrogantly took it upon himself’, Browne acidly wrote, to supply guns to certain sections of the Catholic minority ‘without any explicit government sanction’.⁴⁰ While the various attempts to import guns and ammunitions into Ireland ultimately failed, Haughey’s involvement with this covert activity forever tarnished his political credibility. The net result of Haughey’s actions would lead to his sacking as a government minister in May 1970 and see him face criminal prosecutions for allegedly using government monies to import arms.

Haughey’s credibility and political career were in tatters. Relegated to the Fianna Fáil backbenches in disgrace, it seemed as though he was destined to remain in the political doldrums. If nothing else, however, Haughey was a fighter. He quickly dusted himself off. During the early 1970s he travelled around the Fianna Fáil constituencies doing favours and winning friends. In the words of the British Embassy in Dublin, during his time in the political abyss, Haughey slowly ‘managed to rehabilitate himself’.⁴¹ His hard work eventually bore fruit and in 1975 Fianna Fáil leader Jack Lynch reluctantly restored Haughey to the frontbench as the party’s spokesperson for health. Many of the old guard within Fianna Fáil were aghast by Lynch’s decision. Jim Gibbons, Haughey’s arch nemesis during the Arms Crisis days, foretold that Haughey would destroy Fianna Fáil.⁴²

It was no coincidence that Haughey’s return to the Fianna Fáil frontbench coincided with a dramatic change in the party’s official stance on Northern Ireland. By this period, sharp differences emerged within Fianna Fáil over Lynch’s Northern Ireland policy. To Lynch’s dismay, Fianna Fáil’s spokesman for foreign affairs, Michael O’Kennedy, requested that the British government make a commitment ‘to implement an ordered withdrawal from her involvement in the six-counties of Northern Ireland’.⁴³ O’Kennedy’s remarks had the full backing of Haughey.⁴⁴ By using O’Kennedy as a ‘stalking horse’, to quote a confidential source from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Haughey was attempting to undermine Lynch’s conciliatory approach to Northern Ireland and more generally his leadership.⁴⁵ Under pressure from the hawkish elements within his own parliamentary party, Lynch was forced to accept this statement as the party’s official policy-line for the remainder of his period as Fianna Fáil leader.

Haughey’s political rehabilitation was completed following Fianna Fáil’s stunning general election victory in 1977. On forming a new government, Haughey was appointed minister for health and social welfare, a position that the incumbent taoiseach hoped would absorb his minister’s energies and distract him from his obvious political ambitions. Lynch was mistaken. Seven years on from the humiliation surrounding his ministerial sacking, Haughey was presented with the opportunity to resurrect his naked ambition to secure the leadership of his beloved Fianna Fáil. In December 1979 to the surprise and utter dismay of the majority of his cabinet colleagues, Haughey was elected Fianna Fáil leader and taoiseach. It remains the most remarkable comeback ever witnessed in Irish politics. The Haughey-era had thus begun.

Almost immediately, as is analysed in Chapter Three, Haughey sought to dismantle his predecessor’s Northern Ireland policy. He abandoned Fianna Fáil’s traditional support for an ‘internal’ solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland as a prerequisite to a united Ireland. From the new taoiseach’s perspective, Northern Ireland had failed as a credible entity, therefore a new departure, focused on a Dublin–London axis, was immediately required.⁴⁶ This stance set the benchmark for Haughey’s approach to Northern Ireland for the remainder of his political career.

Haughey’s most substantial contribution to the Northern Ireland question occurred during his first reign as taoiseach from December 1979 to Fianna Fáil election defeat in June 1981. It is for this reason that Chapters Four, Five and Six, respectively, focus on these defining years in the development of Haughey’s public and private stance on Northern Ireland, and more generally Anglo-Irish relations. This study centres on two main and interrelated topics during this period. Firstly, the genesis and evolution of Haughey’s complicated relationship with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher is examined. And secondly, his involvement with the Republican hunger strikes in 1980 and 1981. It is argued that the two Anglo-Irish summit meetings held between Haughey and Thatcher in May and December 1980, particularly the latter, had long-lasting consequences for British–Irish relations and more specifically the Irish government’s involvement in Northern Ireland affairs.

Chapter Four reveals that initially Haughey and Thatcher got on with one another. Lord Charles David Powell, a former key foreign policy advisor to the British prime minister, recounted some years later that after the first Anglo-Irish summit meeting between the two prime ministers in May 1980 ‘there was a glint’ in Haughey’s eye, which Thatcher had ‘found attractive’.⁴⁷ This honeymoon period, however, did not last long. Haughey’s overselling of the second Anglo-Irish summit meeting in December of 1980 infuriated Thatcher. She was particularly upset by Haughey’s claim that in the context of the ‘totality of relationships’ between the British and Irish governments, that Northern Ireland’s constitutional future was to be renegotiated on behalf of Dublin and London. Thereafter, Thatcher never again trusted Haughey.⁴⁸ As Thatcher’s chief press secretary, Bernard Ingham, later recalled: Haughey ‘thought he could twist her [Thatcher] around his little finger – he learned, no way!’⁴⁹

In a more positive light, the Anglo-Irish summit meeting of December 1980, as explored in Chapter Five, undoubtedly heralded a new era in Anglo-Irish relations. Although Thatcher refused Haughey’s request for the holding of an Anglo-Irish conference to consider Northern Ireland’s constitutional future, the goalposts in British–Irish relations undoubtedly shifted. Over the ensuing years, senior Whitehall officials, including Sir Robert Armstrong (created Lord Armstrong of Ilminster in 1988), Thatcher’s cabinet secretary, recognised the Irish government’s ‘legitimate’ right to be consulted on the affairs of Northern Ireland, irrespective of Thatcher’s personal protests. Due to Haughey’s continued co-operation on cross-border security and intelligence and Thatcher’s commitment to foster the ‘unique relationship’ between the two countries, British officials argued that it was now time to realise that the solution to the Northern Ireland conflict ‘… is not to be found exclusively within a narrow Northern Ireland framework’, to quote a Foreign and Commonwealth Office memorandum, dated November 1980.⁵⁰

This recognition by London of Dublin’s legitimate right to play a formal role in helping to find a workable solution to the Northern Ireland conflict was facilitated through the establishment of a series of British–Irish joint study groups in 1981, which first convened under the auspices of a supervisory steering group, comprised of senior British and Irish civil servants in London on 30 January 1981.⁵¹ The commissioning of the British–Irish joint-studies, together with the establishment of the Anglo-Irish intergovernmental council in 1982, played an important role in paving the way for the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and for the genesis of the Northern Ireland peace process during the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Haughey’s association with the Republican hunger strikes, the first in 1980 and the second in 1981, is pieced together in Chapters Five and Six. For the first time, readers learn the extent to which Haughey was forced to play a marginal role during this enveloping crisis. In particular, because of his inability to influence British government thinking during the second Republican hunger strike campaign, Haughey found himself in the one position he despised most: politically impotent. On each occasion that he attempted to intervene directly with Thatcher and her officials in an effort to find a negotiated settlement to the hunger strike campaign, the door was shut in his face.⁵² As a result, Haughey cut a very depressing figure during this period, banished to the political side-lines as the Thatcher government dealt directly with the Republican movement over the heads of the Irish government.

Haughey’s anxiety and frustration was compounded by the Irish government’s support for Thatcher’s refusal to grant the so-called ‘five demands’ to the Republican prisoners.⁵³ His willingness to endorse the Thatcher government on this highly emotive issue, together with his inability to influence the British prime minister’s thinking, left him open to accusations of political indecisiveness and certainly damaged his reputation as a firebrand nationalist. The Republican leadership, under Sinn Féin vice-president Gerry Adams, was particularly astute at propagating the message that Haughey had ‘sold out’ on his republican principles, having become ‘a collaborator’ with Thatcher’s government, to quote Owen Carron.⁵⁴

The subject of the Falklands War in 1982 is central to Chapter Seven. This crisis was a defining moment for Haughey and Anglo-Irish relations. It explains how and why he made a ‘mess’, to quote Desmond O’Malley, of Anglo-Irish diplomatic relations during the crisis and the political fallout between Dublin and London thereafter.⁵⁵ The taoiseach’s display of so-called ‘macho nationalism’⁵⁶ during this period demonstrated the opportunistic nature of his political thinking, revealing the ruthless, even sly, side of his character. Haughey saw the Falklands crisis as the key moment to get his own back on Thatcher because of her unwillingness to allow him play any meaningful role during the second Republican hunger strike. Yet, the result of his stance during the affair, chiefly his decision that the Irish government withdraw support for the British government’s sponsored sanctions against Argentina, resulted in a dramatic deterioration in Anglo-Irish relations.

The fall-out had immediate consequences for Haughey’s plan of convincing the British government to permit Dublin a legitimate role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. During his remaining time in government, Thatcher refused to formally meet Haughey to discuss Northern Ireland, never mind consider permitting the Irish government a functional role in the affairs of Northern Ireland. As a result, Haughey decided to help kick-start a bold new initiative in relation to Northern Ireland. His inability to convince the British government to support his calls for an ‘Irish dimension’ resulted in the taoiseach deciding to drop a central plank of his Northern Ireland policy, in the immediate period, at least. Instead of promoting direct dialogue between the two sovereign governments in Dublin and London to find a negotiated settlement to the Northern Ireland conflict, Haughey proposed his own version of the Social Democratic and Labour Party’s (SDLP) so-called ‘Council for a New Ireland’. His involvement with the Ireland Forum from 1983 to 1984 is