CHARLES HAUGHEY was a man of “calculating and ruthless ambition” who had “become pretty sophisticated and would like to be more so”, Margaret Thatcher was told as she prepared for her first meeting with him.
In a detailed note for the then British prime minister in advance of the May 1980 “teapot summit” in No 10 Downing Street, the British ambassador to Dublin Robin Haydon said Haughey was surrounded by faithful loyalists but few friends.
Becoming taoiseach, he wrote, had been “the overriding objective of his [Haughey’s] life”.
The memo was included in files released yesterday by the British National Archives under the 30- year confidentiality rules. The main batch was released last December, but the number of files to be processed meant that not all of them could have been released at the same time.
Haydon said Haughey dominated his “close-knit and faithful coterie of associates” by “force of character”. Some of the ambassador’s franker views about the late Fianna Fáil leader, however, have been excised from the file and closed for another 10 years.
The memo states that Haughey’s wealth had derived “in part from property speculations undertaken” while he was minister for finance.
“He has acquired a taste for the good things of life, not least as a racehorse owner and a rider to hounds,” Haydon wrote. “He collects pictures and antique furniture. I am told that his house is a showplace and in very good taste.
“He dresses well and is immaculately turned out. He speaks softly and fluently and has a nice sense of humour.” The next section of the letter is excised, but Haydon went on: “Paradoxically, he has become a Puritan in recent years in other directions – notably in a near-total abstention from alcohol and tobacco, though he used to be a heavy drinker.”
Haughey had been exceptionally keen to meet Thatcher and had wanted to do so on the margins of a European Community summit earlier in April 1980. Thatcher, however, was not keen, saying “it would be easier to meet him in the company of others”.
Just four days before the Downing Street encounter, Haughey asked Haydon to meet him in Dublin where he stressed “the importance and significance to himself, as a politician” of the meeting.
“He needed to be able to show some achievement from it. Mrs Thatcher was, he remarked, poised for fresh achievements in this as in other fields,” Haydon reported back to London.
“He pointed to the Iranian embassy siege, which underlined the need for resolute action against terrorism on the part of us all and had been an example to everyone.”
Haughey, the British ambassador went on, had said the collapse of the “Day of Action” called by the British Trades Union Congress shortly before his Downing Street meeting in protest at spending cuts ordered by Thatcher had been a “great triumph” for her.
The British were concerned that Haughey would put pressure on Thatcher to abandon the guarantee given to unionists that the constitutional status of Northern Ireland would not change, although in the end, he did not raise the issue.
Despite his indulging in “verbal republicanism” at a Fianna Fáil ardfheis, the British appeared pleasantly surprised by the level of security co-operation after Haughey took over from Jack Lynch, who had been castigated by some in his own ranks for the support that he had given.
“His remarks on Northern Ireland have not been as bad as some people feared,” Haydon wrote, adding later: “His accession has not harmed security co-operation between the RUC and the Garda which seems, if anything, to have improved.”
He said: “To sum up, I think he is a tough, clever, wily man, no friend of ours, but not, perhaps, actively hostile. He is conscious of his shady past (and present!). Perhaps there is something in what one columnist wrote recently – that he is ‘Ireland’s answer to ‘JR’.”
On the fall of Lynch in 1979, Haydon wrote: “There were also persistent stories that Lynch was fed up . . . I think he was fed up and he certainly showed signs of losing his grip on both the party and the running of the country.”
