Book review: Class, corruption, and rivalry at the birth of modern Ireland

Eoin O’Malley’s thesis is that the rivalry between these two individuals shaped the Ireland that was to evolve after they had both departed the frontline

Former taoisigh Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald, who as leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, transformed Ireland in the 1980s. File picture: Photocall Ireland

• Charlie vs Garret: The rivalry that shaped modern Ireland
• Eoin O’Malley
• Eriu, €23.99 

Borg and McEnroe. The Beatles and The Stones. Kerry and Dublin. Blur and Oasis. Dev and Collins. 

What is it about rivalries where the two principals are divided not just by ambition, achievement, and career goals, but their very character and what they represent in the public imagination?

So it went with Charie and Garret. Haughey and FitzGerald had a rivalry that was at its zenith in the dark 1980s. Charlie was the fly boy, a man of very serious ability who also had about him the whiff of cordite.

He was, as Eoin O’Malley outlines in his engrossing book, a northsider, from a family where his father suffered ill health early in his life, rendering him incapable of supporting his family.

Haughey’s sheer ability ensured that he would receive a full education and the opportunity to pursue whatever career he felt best suited his talents and needs. 

He was an outsider and reveled in the status of one, while continuing to labour under the attendant insecurity.

FitzGerald, on paper at least, was the ultimate insider of the establishment. His father was in the GPO in 1916 and part of the first secure government of the Free State.

He knew the captains and the kings of Irish society and was perfectly at home in UCD, where he met Haughey.

He was Garret the Good, a man of integrity who was perceived as being obliged to put the interests of the State and its people way above his own.

He also was a person of ability, brilliant academically but perhaps deficient in areas like basic organisation.

As O’Malley puts it, FitzGerald was “an academic prone to speaking in statistics rather than plain English,” adding the evocative line: “His hair was chaotic.”

O’Malley’s thesis is that the rivalry between these two individuals shaped the Ireland that was to evolve after they had both departed the frontline.

“How Garret FitzGerald and Charles Haughey interacted changed Ireland. Each looked over their shoulder to anticipate how the other might react,” he writes.

“Through the decade both men made decisions that would change Ireland, but they also didn’t make decisions or were less decisive than their personalities would have suggested, in part because of the other.”

The author’s own father also had a major role in the rivalry as Des O’Malley and his allies continued to chip away at Haughey’s authority after he took over the leadership of Fianna Fáil, arguably arresting Haughey’s attempts to concentrate on governing.

Former taoisigh met in University College Dublin

FitzGerald and Haughey met in UCD where Haughey was very much one of the boys while FitzGerald preferred to keep company with the girls. 

The latter met and married his wife Joan at the college. Their union was solid and enduring and Joan would occupy the role of her husband’s most trusted advisor.

Haughey married Maureen Lemass, daughter of Sean Lemass, senior Fianna Fáil minister and taoiseach to be.

It was inevitable that both would enter politics, although not that FitzGerald would follow his father into Fine Gael. 

For Haughey, possibly the defining incident of his career was the Arms Trial, stemming from a charge that Haughey and others had conspired to import arms to supply to the IRA in the late ’60s.

He was acquitted, but the episode ensured he now “had a myth”, involving “being a good Republican without ever admitting to being involved in any activities”. 

O’Malley’s description is apt as it is one that could well be applied to many others.

His political career nearly died and rose again, ultimately displacing Jack Lynch was party leader in 1979. 

By then, FitzGerald had succeed Liam Cosgrave as Fine Gael leader, having served with him in the 1973-77 coalition government.

The day of Haughey’s election as taoiseach was one that FitzGerald would probably always wish he could have relived. 

He described his rival as having “a flawed pedigree”, which was read as an insult to either or both his family and class. 

FitzGerald’s biggest mistake on that front was a failure to consult his wife on the speech, he would later admit.

Of course, the long view is that Haughey’s flaws were deep and would corrode trust in politics when the extent to which he hoovered up money while in politics would finally emerge.

Charlie vs Garret covers events of the 1980s well. The first shoots of the peace process were pushed up by FitzGerald and his opposite number in Downing Street, Margaret Thatcher, with the Anglo Irish Agreement.

Haughey, as was his wont, fiercely opposed the agreement. It was opposition for opposition’s sake of the most perverse kind, particularly coming from one with family and emotional ties to the North.

During this period, Fianna Fáil drifted to a more conservative position on social issues, again simply because FitzGerald had brought his party in the opposite direction. 

Yet FitzGerald was unable to make progress in economic matters, which were for the second time in 30 years emptying the country of huge legions of its youth.

FitzGerald’s name 'became a byword for failure'

O’Malley argues that 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 …”

After Haughey came back to power following the 1987 election, FitzGerald pledged that he would support government efforts to get the public finances in order, if he agreed with them. 

This was in marked contrast to Haughey’s positioning on all government matters when the shoe was on the other foot.

Haughey did go on to put the State on a firm financial footing and to that extent redeemed what up until that point was a mediocre performance as a leader and taoiseach.

O’Malley posits that if Haughey had been pushed out — by the author’s father and others — in the early ’80s he would have been considered a disastrous leader.

They had contrasting retirements. Fizgerald went on to write what Leo Varadkar would later characterise as “boring articles”, in the media and he enjoyed the status of elder statesman.

Haughey was briefly mooted as a possible presidential contender after he resigned as taoiseach in 1992, but within less than two years the secrets and lies of his acquisition of wealth began to tumble out.

Apart from the greed and deception, there is also a sense of tragedy that somebody so talented, who was so obviously intent of shaping and bettering his country, was so immersed in venality.

O’Malley concludes that his lifestyle was a deliberate rejection of the ascetic lives favoured by the founders of his party, a sense that “financial success was not something to be ashamed of, by an ambition for which Ireland should aim”. 

Sure, but there is no escaping how he came to give the impression of personal financial success and the implications not just for his own legacy but for politics.

The last meeting between these great rivals was in 2005, when FitzGerald visited a seriously ill Haughey in Kinsealy.

“We didn’t talk politics,” FitzGerald said of the occasion. “There was no point in that.”

O’Malley’s thesis that this rivalry was key to the Ireland that followed can be a subject for debate, but his well-written account is worth the read, as both character studies and for the times it evokes.