Long road to champers and Charvet

WHEN the time came to end his eventful political career, Charles J Haughey quoted Shakespeare’s Othello: “I have done the state some service, and they know it. No more of that. I pray you.”

But as yesterdays’ revelations again show, there was a lot more of that, a heck of a lot more.

Much hyped, Haughey, the major four-part documentary on the former Taoiseach’s life, promises to give the first authoritative portrayal on television of a highly complex, highly contradictory, highly contentious figure.

The series has been made by Mint Productions - run by Primetime’s Miriam O’Callaghan and her husband Steve Carson - and is produced and directed by Niamh Sammon, who made the series Fine Gael: A Family at War.

But to extend the Shakespeare metaphor, this portrait is like Hamlet without the Prince.

The most divisive and enigmatic figure in Irish politics since De Valera makes no appearance.

O’Callaghan is said to have come closest to persuading Haughey to lift his shroud of silence, visiting him in Abbeville many times. Ultimately, he declined.

His reasons? Failing health? Possible conflicts with the Moriarty Tribunal? Simply because he felt it would serve no purpose? - it was for others to explain, to condemn, to defend.

That said, he made one critical concession. He allowed access to his family - his four children, and his brother, Fr Eoghan Haughey - and to his closest friends. In the end, there were contributions from some 70 friends, enemies, colleagues, and commentators.

On evidence of a preview of the first hour-long instalment, The Outsider, unlike previous RTÉ whitewashes (on Mary Robinson and Desmond O’Malley), this project is more rounded.

You sense that in the warzone that is Haughey’s life, maintaining that thin blue line - not whitewash, nor blackwash - will prove the greatest challenge for the series.

The first part covers Haughey’s life from childhood to the debilitating setback of the Arms Trial scandal.

It includes some tremendous footage, comment, recollection and insight.

It captures the explosive combination of intellectual brilliance and overreaching cockiness; the contrasts and contradictions between his poor background and later ‘aristocracy’; between his public and private lives.

The strongest theme that dominates the early years is the influence of his mother, who cared for an invalid husband and seven children on a small army pension. His father, an IRA veteran from South Derry, succumbed young to MS.

Haughey seems to have known his own worth from early on.

“He was courageous, clever, confident, some people even say he was crafty,” a friend describes the young schoolboy.

Haughey’s academic flair got him into the famous St Joseph’s in Fairview, and into UCD, on scholarships - in both he encountered the children of the State’s founding fathers and effortlessly cuckooed himself into their milieu.

The interloper theme is developed with Haughey wresting his Dáil seat in 1957 from George Colley’s father - a GPO hero - and setting up a rivalry with his St Joey’s classmate that was to cleave a schism in FF for 30 years.

Ability alone lay behind his political rise - the lie is firmly put by friends to the theory that he married Maureen Lemass as some kind of career move.

Another formidable rival, Garret FitzGerald, concedes that he was a good minister, especially in Finance.

The other rich seam is the ‘Citizen Kane’ dimension. One contributor talks of the young Haughey as a working class figure who smoked Woodbines and liked a pint. He transformed into an ascendancy figure who liked champagne and hunting.

This is ascribed to his insecurity. In his son Sean’s words it simply stemmed from a poor childhood. “His father died of MS at the age of 48. His desire to have a good life is based on that.”

But the price he paid for the good life was deep - and indefensible - compromise, relying on the largesse of the big swatters like PV Doyle and Matt Gallagher. His daughter Eimear Mulhern’s justification for this devil’s deal will not wash with many.

“He chose to go into politics. The salary at the time was pretty small ... They were happy to support him to give him the extra luxuries and things on the basis that he was doing what needed to be done to get the economy right.”

The events surrounding the Arms Trial are reprised, with motivations as elusive now as then. Was he motivated by patriotic duty or was it a cynical ploy to expose the brittleness of Jack Lynch?

The one firm conclusion is he underestimated Lynch. It led to his first major political miscalculation.

But not the last. Will four hours be enough to capture this intriguing larger-than-life man?