Hotly anticipated, the publication of the DCU Professor Eoin O’Malley’s ‘Charlie Vs Garret: The rivalry that shaped modern Ireland’ is the culmination of decades of research.
This included interviews with the late Charles Haughey (1925-2006) and Garret Fitzgerald (1926-2011) along with more than 100 former politicians, advisers and civil servants.
The author has a unique vantage point in being the son of one of that era’s major figures, Dessie O’Malley.
Given Haughey and O’Malley’s mutual animosity, this could easily carry with it a major disadvantage in the form of a skewed perspective.
Thankfully, diligent research and clear thinking has ensured this is not the case, and Professor O’Malley has produced one of the finest books ever written about modern Irish politics.
The two central characters were not quite so different as some may think.
Neither was a dyed-in-the-wool party man. Fitzgerald’s parents initially were divided over the Treaty, and Haughey’s father appears to have also been conflicted too – he remained in the Free State army anyway, and kept a picture of Michael Collins on his wall.
Fitzgerald’s academic or intellectual advantages tend to be exaggerated. For example, he had no economic qualifications when he first began writing about economics for The Irish Times. Haughey was a similarly gifted student, qualifying as a chartered accountant and a barrister at an early age.
One of the defining differences between the two leaders relates to the North.
Both had a strong connection to that part of the country, but to different communities.
Fitzgerald’s mother was a convinced Republican, but was still the daughter of a Belfast Presbyterian unionist who was close to Sir James Craig.
Even before the Troubles began, Fitzgerald stood out for continuously arguing that a United Ireland could only come about if the concerns of Ulster Protestants were assuaged through reconciliation and reform.
In contrast, Haughey’s parents were Derry Catholics, and he would visit his family’s homeplace in Swatragh as a youngster.
Those formative experiences in the shadow of the Sperrins possibly explain the dramatic actions which Haughey took in the wake of the anti-Catholic pogroms in the late 1960s: actions which led to his sacking as Finance Minister, the subsequent Arms Trial and a long exile to the political wilderness.
The words ‘Haughey’ and ‘scandal’ are synonymous, and deservedly so. O’Malley does not sugarcoat the truth, and nor does he dwell unnecessarily on the less savoury aspects of his public and private life.
When the various episodes are described as skilfully as they are here, characters leap off the page and into life.
Some of it can hardly be believed, except as an explanation for how this extraordinarily charismatic and wily titan routinely survived scandals which would have finished any other politician, through means which would have shamed any other person.
It is not so much the description of Haughey being arrested at his mansion for attempting to import arms, it is the fact that the Gardaí arrived while Haughey was discussing the issue with Supreme Court Judge Brian Walsh, who was then found trying to flee through the backdoor.
It is not just the Garda phone tapping of journalists in an effort to locate party leakers, it is the late night phone calls to party dissidents, the appearance of cars outside anti-Haughey TDs’ homes, the wrestling to the ground of the former Minister Jim Gibbons outside Leinster House or the hovering of a helicopter over Brian Lenihan’s residence to deliver a message: resign.
Haughey acted the part of Don Corleone and clearly relished the role. When two of his ministers resigned, one of them was even sent a package with two dead ducks in it, signed ‘Shot over Kinsealy.’
Comical or not, there is no excusing it. Even though O’Malley rightly points out that “none of the many investigations into Haughey’s finances found clear links between Haughey the public figure’s public actions and Haughey’s private finances,” it is undeniable that his career lowered the ethical standards in Irish public life.
Yet the author makes clear what others still choose to deny. Like him or loathe him, Haughey played a vital role in digging Ireland out of the desperate economic malaise which it had been stuck in since the early 1970s.
The contrast with Fitzgerald’s record as Taoiseach is striking. A social democrat who was always deferential towards the Labour Party, Garret Fitzgerald played a major role in prolonging the misery by refusing to take hard steps.
A Labour-inspired decision early in the Fine Gael/Labour coalition (1982-1987) to override the Minister for Finance Alan Dukes in his efforts to cut spending made the budget deficit worse, and set the tone for what would follow.
Ireland at the start of the 1980s was practically socialist, with the state accounting for 60% of GNP. More interventionist measures would follow during the Fitzgerald years, with the same dismal results.
When Haughey returned to power in 1987, he chose a radically different course of action in sharply cutting public spending while reducing income tax and targeting more FDI.
His backbenchers howled, he had no overall majority, and yet he stood bravely behind Finance Minister Ray MacSharry while working effectively with the unions to bring about compromises needed to steady the ship.
Haughey was no Milton Friedman, but he could see where the global economy was moving and what Ireland needed to do to prosper. Blinded by the fashionable left-wing views he had adopted in the Sixties – “as a result of his conservatism being unable to stand up to the scrutiny of his students and his children” – Garret Fitzgerald would never have acted so decisively.
Haughey also had more vision than that supposed intellectual giant. O’Malley writes that the proposal to establish the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) was made during the Fitzgerald government, but left on the shelf. Haughey, on the other hand, saw the potential, included it in his party’s manifesto and made it a priority item when he again became Taoiseach.
The IFSC is a legacy of his, as is the redevelopment of Temple Bar and much more besides.
It is wrong to think that Eighties Ireland was a land divided by questions of economic theory, however.
Fitzgerald’s mixed feelings on abortion and his support for divorce contrasted with Haughey’s clear opposition to both, and the referendums of 1983 and 1986 represented a new division.
Labelled as the ‘Second Partitioning of Ireland’ by Tom Hesketh and described by Desmond Fennell as a clash between ‘Nice People and Rednecks,’ the intensification of the culture war made the battle between Charlie and Garret more acrimonious.
Ireland was already changing and it was the view of Garret Fitzgerald and his admirers in the media that it needed to change faster.
Unlike the current Fianna Fáil leader, Charlie Haughey was not convinced of the merits of any change due to it being considered ‘progressive.’ He did not feel the need to be liked by people who were never going to vote Fianna Fáil anyway.
Whereas Dr. Garret spoke at the Irish public, Charlie spoke for them, and was on the winning side of both referendums. For this more so than his financial travails, he has never been forgiven.
His infidelity is often the target of criticism too, as if all who support socially conservative viewpoints are duty bound to have led a sinless life since birth.
Haughey should have been a better husband, but there is nothing unusual about politicians failing to live up to standards they publicly support.
Some decades ago in Italy, there was a similar contrast between prime ministerial rivals Silvio Berlusconi and Romano Prodi: the private rogue who upheld Church teaching on public matters like same-sex unions, and the left-leaning public dissenter from those teachings who appeared to lead a conventional private life as a lay Catholic. None of this is unique to Ireland, nor to Charles J. Haughey.
Fitzgerald was lionised by Ireland’s cultural elite. Given his own status as a columnist for The Sunday Independent, O’Malley’s comment on the media reaction to his death in 2011 is particularly interesting, in that he writes that “for many correspondents to the paper he wrote for, Fitzgerald was Ireland’s greatest Taoiseach.”
Greatest on what grounds? His accomplishments were strikingly few. The economic situation was bad when he became Taoiseach and bad when he left office. The Troubles did not end either, and his liberal agenda stalled.
As O’Malley rightly puts it, Fitzgerald’s “name became a byword for failure. He failed to deal with the worsening public finances; Ireland continued to shed jobs and people through emigration. His major initiatives in social reform failed to come to fruition…”
Were it not for his social liberalism, this failure would be seen for what it was more generally.
This too tells a story, not about Eighties Ireland but about the Ireland of 2025, where policy failure on the part of politicians is routinely overlooked so long as they are on the ‘right side’ on the big issues: abortion, hate speech, organised homosexuality and so forth.
Ireland has drifted much further to the Left than most people realise. On several occasions, O’Malley writes about the disruptive influence in the 1980s of the Labour Senator Michael D. Higgins, who led the opposition within Labour to participation in the coalition with Fine Gael.
He was an arch ideologue then and has not changed. Ireland has moved significantly, to the point where the President is only considered to be centre-left.
Fitzgerald’s stated policy of not allowing cabinet votes where the Labour Party was united in a minority greatly strengthened the smaller partner in that coalition. It cemented the status of Fine Gael as a party with no clear beliefs of its own, beholden to actual believers within the coalition party.
Small leftist parties like Labour and the Greens have played a similar role in more recent governments, and their strength (coupled with the corresponding inability of small conservative parties to present themselves as credible coalition partners) helps explain why Irish politics is where it is.
There is one other change that this terrific book highlights, and that is the change within Fianna Fáil. It too has become an ideological husk, with some committed liberals allied to a larger grouping who have no strong opinions about anything.
Micheál Martin first entered Dáil Éireann in 1989 when Haughey was Taoiseach, and he was happy to support ‘The Boss’ in the years that followed. The party he has led since 2011 has been transformed in that time and bears little resemblance to that which is described here.
For almost a decade, they have been in (first unofficial, then official) coalition with Fine Gael, and the distinctions have faded in a way which has diminished Irish democracy and disenfranchised many voters.
In the Charlie vs Garret era, there was a difference between the two big parties. Fianna Fáil was more conservative on social issues and more nationalistic on the North, and it eventually became more centre-right on the economy too.
Under Haughey, Fianna Fáil had an identity and a raison d’être. It had the will to truly govern, and the courage to represent the views of the Irish people as they are, and not as Garret Fitzgerald or Micheál Martin might like them to be.
None of that is true anymore, which is greatly unfortunate for party and nation alike.