ANALYSIS:When Haughey took the reins he was intent on instilling a radical change of NI policy, writes JOHN BOWMAN
WITHIN WEEKS of becoming taoiseach Charles Haughey gave notice to those civil servants who had been custodians of Jack Lynch’s line on Northern Ireland that he intended to put his own stamp on Dublin’s policy.
In late January, six key players reviewed the situation: Haughey himself and Dermot Nally from the Taoiseach’s department; and four from Foreign Affairs, minister Brian Lenihan being joined by assistant secretary and specialist in Anglo-Irish relations David Neligan along with the ambassador in London, Eamon Kennedy and in Washington, Seán Donlon.
Kennedy reported that there was “some uncertainty” about the Northern Ireland policy of the new Thatcher administration. From recent conversations with Thatcher and her foreign secretary Lord Carrington, he could report “heightened British interest” and also a desire “to move forward in that area”. Kennedy thanked Haughey for setting up the meeting as both ambassadors were “in the front line” in relation to this policy.
Since Haughey’s accession, “people in Britain were understandably wondering if that also meant a change in Northern Ireland policy”.
What was Dublin’s attitude to the Atkins initiative on devolved powersharing and “to the issue of withdrawal of British troops”? Kennedy felt that ministerial meetings would be useful as well as “eventually” a Thatcher-Haughey summit. He reported Lord Hailsham as recently suggesting to him “that personal contacts on the highest level could be very useful as they did not know the Taoiseach as much as they would like to”.
Kennedy also noted “a rising tide of impatience with the continuing cost in blood and money of violence in Northern Ireland and with the intransigence of Unionist leaders, clearly demonstrated in connection with the Atkins initiative”.
Thatcher and her colleagues in government – according to Kennedy – “seemed to be in the mood to impose a solution” if one could not be negotiated, adding that “their success on the Rhodesian problem would now, hopefully, give them more time and energy to get to grips with the Northern problem”. Kennedy told the meeting that he had recently made these points to Thatcher and Carrington “and found a positive response”.
Moreover Thatcher had a strong Commons majority unlike the Callaghan government which in its declining years “was openly doing deals with the Unionists in order to stay alive”.
He suggested that along with the emergence of Hume and Paisley – “as potential leaders of their respective communities” in the North – there was also new leadership in London and Dublin which “gave reason for hope” that all parties could be brought to “the frontiers of a new approach to a real solution”. He added one further positive as he read it: Thatcher’s keenness to revive the “special relationship” with Washington. “This was something we would be wise to be concerned about.”
Haughey then invited Donlon to sum up the picture in Washington. He emphasised the importance of Tip O’Neill who was “in a peculiarly strong position” because of his office and also his chairmanship of the Democratic nomination convention. There was a need to continually brief such key players, a need to keep “this highly influential lobby fed”.
Haughey ventured that it would be important not to divide US opinion into “goodies and baddies” and wondered whether there wasn’t one objective that all could unite behind. It was manifest from these exchanges and the line of Haughey’s questioning that he coveted the approval of those Irish-American lobbyists ostracised by Donlon – and Lynch – as Provo fellow-travellers.
Explicitly he asked if it was necessary “to reject [Mario] Biaggi’s help? Was he not a member of Carter’s re-election committee?” This suggestion received a polite but comprehensive rebuttal from Donlon who listed many reasons why Biaggi should not be embraced by the Irish embassy in Washington.
His importance to Carter was not great but in so far as it existed it was because “he alone in New York had declared for Carter at an early stage” – and this for an entirely self-interested motive which had “nothing to do with the Irish question”. On Ireland, he embraced Ó Bradaigh, had been a speaker at the Noraid dinner and as for Biaggi’s ad hoc committee on Ireland, “ostensibly it had 132 members, but only about six were active”. He was a “minor opportunist with a discreditable past”.
Haughey then outlined his own thinking. He considered the Atkins talks as an irrelevancy. He believed that Dublin should declare its aims: either call on the British “to declare their interest in the eventual unity of Ireland” or, as an alternative, “we might say to the United Kingdom that it should withdraw”. Brian Lenihan described this latter formulation as “too crude”.
But Haughey was intent on a radical change of gear, arguing that “we should declare the espousal by Britain of a new position on eventual Irish unity to be our principal objective”. He was opposed to what he termed a “non-policy” and reckoned his proposal would “offer some hope, otherwise there would be no peace”.
To Kennedy’s warnings that any such British declaration would trigger a loyalist backlash, Haughey’s rejoinder was that the loyalists “would revel in inaction forever. No new dawn was going to come bringing enlightenment to the loyalists.”
When Neligan also warned that the security situation might “sharply disimprove” following any such policy change, the taoiseach replied “that violence was there anyway and inquired whether it could get much worse”.
He then returned to a theme which Donlon may have thought had been well covered at the start of the meeting. Haughey still wanted “a single nationalist objective” such as he had outlined. Could this not be put to Tip O’Neill, with Donlon meantime attempting to get everybody “under some common umbrella”.
Donlon again explained the split between O’Neill and the Irish National Caucus – the “determination on O’Neill’s part not to muddy the channel of communication to the White House by dealing with unclean politicians and organisations”.
Later that summer Haughey attempted to shift Donlon from the Washington embassy but relented when O’Neill, Ted Kennedy and others persuaded him of Donlon’s importance in that post.