The former taoiseach epitomised a national desire to be a rebel and, at the same time, a prince in absolute power, writes Declan Kiberd
'I have done the State some service, and they know it." In his speech of resignation from the office of Taoiseach, Charles Haughey quoted Shakespeare's Othello. Othello was the Moor of Venice, who married the daughter of one of its leading citizens and who protected the state against its enemies. But he was a black man in a city of white people and never felt accepted or secure.
Perhaps Mr Haughey's speechwriter was making a similar point. It was, after all, the period in which Roddy Doyle had one of his characters proclaim in The Commitments that the Irish were the blacks of Europe, the Dubliners the blacks of Ireland, and the northsiders the blacks of Dublin.
By purchasing a Gandon house in Kinsealy, Charles Haughey managed to have things both ways - to remain a sort of super-northsider, even as he proclaimed himself a toff. Back in 1922 at the moment of national independence, a blacksmith was asked what would happen to the Anglo-Irish and said with republican fervour: "We will in our arse have our own gentry." Instead, we got Charlie Haughey.
He remained by his absence from the recent TV series what he was through most of his political life - an open space into which people could read whatever they wanted him to mean. Intermittent acts of kindness to pensioners in his early career (the free bus pass and TV licence) suggested he was a genuine populist: but then he was often photographed in newspapers riding to hounds.
He epitomised a national desire, deeply engrained in Fianna Fáilers, to be at one and the same time a rebel and a superstraight, a rapparee in the hills and a prince in absolute power. In this he embodied the self-deception of many people; and as a leader he got the people he deserved.
The TV series was made by a youthful team, for whom the events of Mr Haughey's career might be filed under "history" rather than "current affairs". They sought to balance the voices which were pro and con throughout but for this they were accused of producing hagiography (or "Haughiography") by some of his fiercest critics. Yet, compared with the boringly deferential portrayals of Jack Lynch, Desmond O'Malley and Conor Cruise O'Brien in previous documentaries, this one was impartial yet dramatic.
There was a time when such even-handedness would have been less likely. After the phone-tapping scandals of the 1980s, journalists who had once revered Charles Haughey for his sassiness went on all-out attack. Anti-Fianna Fáil-ism became the dominant mode in the media, but it never amounted to a philosophy. It was merely a knee-jerk reaction against a mushy Knocknagow traditionalism that no longer seemed adequate to the nation's plight.
These were the years when a Daily Telegraph editorial said that the only thing keeping Ireland out of the Third World was the weather; when it was revealed that one out of every two persons born in the State since independence had emigrated; when graduates routinely abandoned a country which Gay Byrne kept telling them was "banjaxed". What had banjaxed it, of course, was the "squandermania" practised by Jack Lynch and his cronies in the 1977 election.
From this retrospect, Haughey may be seen to have become the focus for the ire of many frustrated people in a period when they lost confidence in the whole experiment of Irish independence. He became the target for many attacks on a country that was failing to deliver basic amenities. The 1980s were a decade of compulsory internationalism, when all the talk was of "world music" or "world novels". Journalists in Dublin constructed careers attacking "patriotism" and could feel quite moral about all this when the butt of their anger was Haughey, who enriched himself as others tightened belts.
Since ideas of "national pride" had been mocked to nothingness, the word patriotism could not be invoked in any of the subsequent exposés of the golden circles of the early 1990s. Yet many civil servants were shocked beyond belief at what was being revealed: and their own behaviour still contrasted markedly with the venality of some politicians. One senior administrator in the Department of Finance, whenever he called his wife on the office phone, still ritually took a stamp out of his wallet and tore it in two, to defray his debt to the State.
In this period, Mr Haughey seemed to lose his nerve as a leader. For weeks on end he withdrew from public debate; and when he offered rare interviews, was as likely to give them to a stringer from Raidio na Gaeltachta or (in a hilarious dig at his detractors in RTÉ) to the man from the Russian news agency. On the 75th anniversary of the Easter Rising in 1991, he conducted a sheepish, scaled-down ceremony.
Far from asking why he was conducting such a tacky commemoration, the reporter from RTÉ was emboldened to ask the Taoiseach of a sovereign Republic why he was holding a commemoration at all.
And Haughey gave a civil answer and admitted the question. It was a far cry from the man who had promised to return Fianna Fáil to its republican roots.
What kept the myth of Charles Haughey alive was the pathological hatred of him among large sections of the media. Every attack suggested that there might still be something in the man worth attacking. He was indeed blessed in his enemies.
But will he now be blessed also by his friends? On the TV documentary they suggested that historians in 30 years would credit Haughey with laying the basis for two major contemporary achievements: the peace process in Northern Ireland and the Celtic Tiger in the Republic.
Fr Alec Reid gave eloquent testimony about his willingness to risk contacts through intermediaries with the paramilitaries: and Dermot Desmond suggested the IFSC might never have materialised without his support. (He also said, rather incautiously, that he would give Charlie lots more money, if he wanted it).
In years to come the after-image of Charles Haughey on the national retina will be determined by historians but also by two groups not significantly represented on the TV series - writers and artists. Many of these people have idolised Haughey through all the years of controversy and for very good reasons.
It is hard for citizens now to realise just how oppressed most writers felt in the days of a literary censorship which not only robbed them of a livelihood but also deprived them of an audience in their own country. That regime was relaxed by Brian Lenihan as Minister for Justice in 1967: but it was the tax exemption created by Haughey in 1969 which really assured artists that they were valued members of the new Ireland. It was in effect an act of reparation for past wrongs and a sign that creativity henceforth would be prized by this leader. And so it was; the setting up of Aos Dána in 1980 guaranteed a minimum income and a national profile for a self-elected body of writers and artists.
By the time this was done, many writers had come to identify with Charlie Haughey as a swashbuckling figure. His enemies, after all, were their enemies too - the buttoned-down sections of the stuffy bourgeoisie. He was beloved by many of Dublin's northside poor and by some of the horsey set, but, like the artists, he had little time for cautious middle Irelanders.
The northsiders must now be much less sure of their man than once they were; but some of the artists can soon be expected to rehabilitate his image. In his heyday Haughey was compared to a Gaelic chieftain. Each chief had his own bard or file whose duty was to praise his exploits in life, much in the manner of a PJ Mara-style spin-doctor. But the file really came into his own after the chief passed on. Literature may in the long run prove kinder to Mr Haughey than either the historians or the programme makers. Writers may in time portray him as a man whose extreme virtues outweighed his extreme vices, if only just. The real truth may get lost in the telling.
Declan Kiberd is professor of Anglo-Irish literature at UCD and author of Inventing Ireland (Vintage paperback).