Charlie Haughey Was Not A Hypocrite

Actually, I really do not know whether he was or not, although I would not have said that pretence to virtue was one of the things that distinguished his public persona as I remember it. However, my purpose in this note is not to holistically assess the man or his life, but to focus on two episodes which are often said to illustrate his alleged hypocrisy.

The first of these was what has come to be regarded as his "infamous" broadcast soon after taking office as Taoiseach for the first time. In that, he correctly (in my view) diagnosed a national economic emergency and delivered a stirring call to action, including the phrase "we must tighten our belts". It emerged a decade or so later that he did nothing of the kind himself, and I have lost count of the number of times that this has been wheeled out as an example of Haughey's alleged hypocrisy.

Well, of course, it wasn't an attractive way to behave, and arguably he had a duty to set a good example, but hypocritical it wasn't, I suggest. (And even if it was, I would argue that it was necessary: was Haughey supposed to neglect his undoubted duty to inform and admonish the citizenry just because he had a thrift problem himself ?)

The second putative example of Haughey hypocrisy is said, by Fintan O'Toole and others, to have been his resistance to reform to Irish marriage laws and specifically his opposition to the 1986 proposal to lift the constitutional ban on divorce. This, the argument goes, was blatantly at odds with his cavalier attitude to his own marriage vows.

No, it has never made sense to me. I do not see that opposition to divorce implies a pretence to virtue in sexual matters.

Besides that, Haughey was not totally free to indulge his personal views in arriving at political positions as leader of his party. Even if he was personally in favour of removing the divorce ban - I don't know if he was - he had not only a duty to represent his party but a vital need not to be seen to betray their values for merely personal reasons.

Yes, if his conscience dictated something, he could be said to be morally obliged (i.e. on pain of hypocrisy) to pursue it, even at the cost of his position, but there is no sign that it was issue of conscience for Haughey, any more than it was for most voters on both sides of the issue.

Comments

[karl deeter]

When I came to Ireland we didn't live very far frm CJH, he had sewers diverted to go through his land (automatically getting rezoned in the process), the feiltrim road - which was dire - was repaved: but only as far as his daughters house! There were plenty of examples similar, so sadly he was a hypocrite because he implied that there was a need to behave prudently and yet he didn't do this himself - with € that wasn't his. What he did with his own money doesn't matter, but it was his actions with public money in which he truly took the p1$$ in my opinion and those actions rightly justify his moniker of 'hypocrite'.

[Fergus O'Rourke]

What you describe, Karl, was naughtiness, not hypocrisy.