Former Irish Taioiseach Charles Haughey died today aged 80. I'd be interested to hear what my new friends in the Irish blogosphere made of him. I have to admit I didn't like him very much and always thought he came across as a bit too crafty by half. However, I seem to remember that Mrs T - always a sucker for bit of charm - found him infinitely more preferable to the rather dull Garrett Fitzgerald.
19 comments:
That's cos Garrett was better than Charlie.
Charlie was a crook and he is directly responsible for the Provisional IRA. Now he's dead the full truth of his crimes will come out.
(For those who don't know Haughey arranged for right wing Republicans to be armed because they were more likely to shoot the prods and the Brits than the communist-influenced "Official" IRA who wanted to united the working class in an "anti-imperialist front").
Haughey was forced to resign and charged with arms smuggling. He got off, but history won't be as kind.
Anon 908 spot on.
History of corrupt financial relationships(Dunn) and gun runner/broker for IRA. Worst type of politician. Would have done well in SAmerica.
A real Dark Ages politician.
Interested to read what eulogists have to say. Damned with faint praise is the best he can hope for.
I can just picture boulavadier Hain mouthing some rubbish.
The BBC mentioned in their obit that he was found to be holding on to funds given to pay for a collegues liver transplant, and had even bought a tailored shirt out of it.
The man sounds like he was all heart!
Always seems to be the way for British politicians dealing with our neighbours - they get on better with non-ideological soulmates.
I would bracket Haughey with Mitterand. Draw your own conclusions....
PCF - if you want a clean politician, I will offer you Enoch Powell. He was so simon pure that he paid for postage from the Commons rather than use the pre-paid envelopes. Or Dennis Skinner, who still takes a salary based on NUM norms and gives the rest to some cause or other.
Croydonian - how do we know Thatcher and Haughey weren't ideological soulmates? Fianna Fáil is not exactly known for being clear about what it stands for!
As for Haughey's contributions to the cause of a United Ireland, it was pointed out on Slugger O'Toole that he was one of the last Irish politicians to predict a United Ireland in their time. And he wasn't the best advert for the cause - one person from the south who visited an SDLP conference was shocked to find most people there would vote for the UK over a UI because of politicians like Haughey!
Charlie Haughey:A man who will be remembered primarily for always putting the interests of his own wallet first!An inspirational figure for many African tyrants,I've no doubt!
A typically nauseating statement on Charlie's death can be found on Senator Ted Kennedy's website.(btw no mention of Chappaquiddick on the 'Timeline' feature on that site - 'shurely shome mishtake' -1969 missing for some reason.......)
Croydonian,
I suspect Dennis Skinner may not be as lilywhite as might be inferred, at least in the past. He would be my MP were I not resident in an ex-colony. I seem to recall the odd scandal at district council level (or whatever it was in the old days) involving Dennis. Can't remember the details unfortunately and I'm a bit too far away to delve into it.
When I was in Ireland the joke was that Haughey's (malign) influence spread so far that the donkeys said "Haughey" rather than "hee haw". It wasn't funny then either but it rang true.
An Irish Lloyd George if ever there was one
And that is definetly not a compliment
Dennis Skinner sees himself as such a sea-green incorruptible that he won't even let journalists buy him a cup of tea.
I disagree with him that MPs should have no outside jobs or interests - if some MPs want to be, for example, barristers or Recorders it can only help them keep in touch with the real world. We've got too many MPs on all sides who are ex-researchers and speechwriters, and have never done a job in the real world. One of Cameron's achievements is not to look like the party apparatchik he used to be (unlike his colleague Tim Collins, who looks like a Harry Enfield creation, particularly with that awful haircut, one of the lankest and greasiest fringes ever seen).
And, of course, there are too many MPs on all sides who would have been (and were) great in a backroom, but are completely unsuited to prime time. Ed Davey, Tim Collins (when he gets back in), Ruth Kelly (I don't suppose she can help looking like a bemused Orang Utan, but her Belgravia Cockney drone is a triumph for elecutory downward mobility), and the brothers Miliband (particularly Ed, with his ill-tempered debut on the Daily Politics).
You shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but an exception should be made for Haughey. A crook. Plain and simple. Lady T's greatest error was having anything to do with the man, or his country(certainly at that time). That we subjected the decent people of Northern Ireland to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, allied with that criminal, should be a lasting regret.
Jack Charlton told a good story about Haughey once. By some miracle Jack took "the Republic of Ireland" to the Quarter Finals of the World Cup in Italy in 1990. Anyway reality dawned and they lost the Quarter Final to Italy, generally owing to a complete lack of skill and an absence of tactical knowledge. Well there was an election coming up in Ireland, so Charlie Hookey(sic) didn`t miss his chance to go into the dressing room, and be seen to commiserate with the team. You might remember Charlie boy. He had a brief spell as Prime Minister, or Taoiseach, of Ireland, followed a serious of lengthy trials for (alleged) fraud and embezzlement...every else alleged it, only Charlie denied it. Now of course most of the Irish players didn`t have a clue who he was...some of them
would have struggled to have found Ireland on a map. So John Aldridge(born in Liverpool) asked Andy Townsend(born in London)...`Who the f*** is that?!`. A minute Townsend turned around and told Aldridge...`Quinny says he owns a
Tea Shop!`. Priceless. Charlton was brilliant at the after dinner speaking, and the rumour was he just got paid in pints.
In one of his terms in government it was him in 1989, who introduced the corporation tax, regulation & governemnt spending cuts which have led directly to Ireland going from a country with 2/3 of our per capita GDP to 4/3rds.
As such he is undoubtedly the Irish leader who did most to help his countrymen (not excluding the leaders of the independence movement). If he made a fair bit of money on the side his countrymen can afford it.
I would accept Paul's comparison with Lloyd George & consider it high praise.
Michael - Thatcher's greatest mistake was not working with Haughey but siding with Tudjman the openly Nazi Croatian leader. It says much for political "respectability" that Haughey's peaceful achievements earn him less respect than Tudjman's genocidal ones.
Michael Oakshott (sic) is confused about taoisigh (Irish PMs). Thatcher signed the Anglo-Irish Agreement with Garret FitzGerald, not Haughey. Haughey opposed it vehemently on November 15 1985 but implemented it with alacrity when he returned to power in 1987.
You English Tories don't understand the extent to which Thatcher breathed new life into Sinn Fein: they were on the point of extinction in 1979. The Hunger Strikes of 1980 turned everything around for them: they moved from being a 3 per cent party (admittedly with a wider base of passive support) to a 10 per cent party (now the're about a 22 per cent party). Garret FitzGerald understood that something had to be done for Northern Irish nationalists opposed to violence. Douglas Hurd, always a sensible sort, agreed. The AIA was the result.
The immobolism of Unionists from 1972 until Trimble cost them very dear. The idea that the British ought to have protected them against every wind of change is in the end unrealistic. Stormont PM Terence O'Neill realised in 1968 that the future of the Union ultimately lies in the hands of Northern Irish Catholics. Rather than act as persuaders for the Union, the Unionists have too often wanted the British government to assert its sacrosanct character. Look where that's got them!
You're wrong, Iain, when you say that Garret (one t, note) was dull. He was a highly innovative politician and a shrewd thinker.
You have to side with Neil Craig's economic argument. CH helped implement an incredibly successful economic strategy - it would be a greater achievement with a bigger country such as the UK, but it remains a solid achievement nevertheless. For all his faults CH was clearly an excellent political operator.
It is quite easy to cut taxes if your country is being hosed down with money by the EU.
Also, calling Tudjman a Nazi is a bit over the top - he was revisionist vis a vis the Ustase and the Croat puppet state in the '40s, but hardly in the same league as Himmler, Heydrich, Goebbels et al. And I say that as a Serbophile and a conviction Zionist.
Neil
Fair point about Haughey, I just always remember the little turd there with Lady T. Iwas never really bother about the demographics of Northern Ireland. Which other part of the UK is subject to this constant foreign threat from a foreign country. The solution was simple. State that the union is here top say, then fight the terrorists. Thatcher didn't do this and it is a great shame. I am not sure you could say Trimble breathed new life into Unionism, bearing in mind their people electorally crucified him(and with good reason). Your logic would seem to indicate that the Anglo-Irish Agreement only boosted them further. The moral of Al Quada is that you should never be afraid to fight evil, and the IRA were certainly that.
Croydonian
I don't think it was mainly the EU money wot dunnit. If that was the case Scotland would be growing fast on Barnet formula money & the UK would have been doing so for decades on North sea oil cash. One of the things that, as somebody normally to the left of the Tories made me approve of David Davis is that he at least made noises about the importance of growth.
I will stand by what I said about Tudjman. He is on record as both denying the Holocaust (saying it was only 900,000 Jews) & that "Hitler's new European order can be justified by the need to be rid of the Jews". His opinion as to the genocide of Serbs was similar but more direct hence nearly half the 560,000 Serbs living in Croatia are "missing".
He may have been our friend in the destruction of Yugoslavia (& was certainly helmut Kohl's) but he was a Nazi.
I guess, at least by the standards of the BBC & ITN who have managed to spend 16 years reporting on our wars there without reporting Tudjman's remarks or similar ones from our KLA & Bosnian fundamentalist friends, that I also am Serbophile. And proud of it.
" The solution was simple. State that the union is here top say, then fight the terrorists."
Hmmmm Michael Oakshott, you really do betray an ignorance about Northern Ireland that is sadly only too prevalent among many Brits.
Were the British government ever to do such a thing, the IRA would have to very quickly dig up all those guns they pored concrete on because there would be a flock of people wanting to put them to use - most of whom would never have had any truck with the Provos in the past.
Northern Ireland was created out of the barrel of a gun (or at least the threat of its use) in direct defiance of the democratically expressed wishes of the people of Ireland. Few northern nationalists have forgotten that (even if the British right likes to.) The right to at one point in the future decide their own future through the ballot box kept them away from violence; it would be an act of utmost foolishness and ignorance to deny them that prospect.
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