The Other Charlie

JOE JACKSON: Gay Byrne once described you as "an honest man" and suggested that because of this you’d not get far in Irish politics. Was he right, on both counts?

CHARLIE McCREEVY: In most people’s view I probably haven’t progressed far up the political ladder but that never was a great ambition of mine. The standard definition of getting ahead in Irish politics, particularly in a party like Fianna Fáil, is that you are supposed to say either the right thing or just shut up. You’re not supposed to step out of line. But having tried that for a year I realised in 1978 that you might as well be sending your shoes up to vote in Dáil Eireann and I decided that’s not for me, I wasn’t going to be just another idiot.

So party members who tow the line are idiots?

I don’t mean it in a denegratory sense. But Fianna Fáil has been a party where people had to tow the line and not say anything controversial. That’s the way it’s been for generations and many still go along with that. But politics have changed in the ’70s and ’80s and Fianna Fáil is only slowly being brought into line with those and other changes…

You’re perceived, publicly, as a bit of a ‘Good Time Charlie’ – flashing credit cards, gambling, drinking champagne, etc. How does that square up with your role as a politician?

Like everybody else too I am a mass of contradictions. Yes, I like the good life and I live it hard and before you ask if that ill-affects my judgement at times, I’ll admit I’ve probably made hundreds of mistakes, politically and personally, over the years but I wouldn’t go back and change any of that because at lest I’ve learned from my mistakes. But in relation to the ‘Good Time Charlie’ tag that’s something slapped onto me by a media that likes to keep things simple, thinks only in headlines and doesn’t give two fucks about what a politician really is all about…

One consequence of your move from being an accountant to becoming a politician is that your marriage broke up in the process. Do you blame that on the pressures in political life?

No, but it certainly didn’t help. And I often wonder what would have happened to my marriage if I hadn’t been in politics. But what really sickens me is when the media writes about ‘the cushy life’ of politicians. It’s a grand fucking ‘cushy life’ when everybody else has gone to bed and you’re traipsing back from a meeting 30 miles from your home at one o’clock in the morning and then you’re back up and out at eight!_How can your home life not suffer? But I wouldn’t blame that totally. Most of what happened in the break-up was my own fault.

Some politicians, at the time, capitalised on the fact that you were quite open about the break-up of your marriage.

Not in County Kildare. No one tried to turn it into an issue and I’ll always be grateful to them for that.

It’s been suggested that Charles Haughey did, in an effort to undermine you.

It’s hard to prove that Mr Haughey did. Maybe the Fianna Fáil party in total did, even in Kildare, but the Opposition didn’t. And my constituents didn’t seem to mind either. But then my reputation as a politician is that I tell things as they are. I had to be open about the break-up of my marriage. It’s better to tell the truth about these things. There are lots of politicians in the house who lead double lives and treat it differently but I couldn’t…

I’m still close to my wife and my four children. We’ve all remained close friends. That’s the reason I don’t really want to talk about this. There are other people involved. I don’t want to cause them any more hurt than I have in the past. That’s the only reason. If it affected only me I’d say what I please but I must now consider my wife and family. Only once in my life, when we were separating, did I make a statement to the press about my family situation and I haven’t since then in ny interview. What I’ve said to you is as much as I can say.

Do you consider it a matter of concern that a politician may adopt a public position on a specific issue while privately living a lifestyle diametrically opposed to that?

There were times that hypocrisy made me sick. Such as the time of the Divorce Referendum campaign when you saw politicians making speeches against divorce, playing the ‘goody-goody’ when you know they are the greatest whore-masters around. Yet it’s fellas like me who get a bad name maybe because we are open about these things…

Was it that experience which made you pro-divorce?

No. I was pro-divorce back when I was a student. For some, I know it’s a religious matter – to me it’s basically a civil right. People should have the freedom to enter into a contract, break it and enter into a contract with someone else whether that means living with someone else or re-marrying. And though I know I don’t have the freedom to re-marry, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. Yes, I know there are people living in a form of emotional and legal limbo because of the laws on divorce, but for me, personally, it’s not an issue. I’m pro-divorce, spoke for it and voted for it and would again.

As a Catholic you’ve no problem with the thought of ‘living in sin’ with someone?

(laughs) Absolutely none at all.

So if any of your three daughters or your son said they wanted to live with someone before, or in place of, marriage that’d be no problem?

No problem at all. And that’s not as a result of my marital status either. As a product of the ’60s I’ve always thought that.

In terms of embracing the liberalism of the ’60s, did you go the whole hog re sex, drugs and dressing like a hippy?_Did Charlie McCreevy wear a headband?

Well I never did drugs!_That’s the only thing I missed out on! I never even smoked, what do you call that oul’ thing?_Shit?_And no, I never wore a headband! I may not have been conservative in my views but I as i the way I dressed. In terms of my time at college I came from a very poor family and my mother, in the first place, couldn’t afford to send me there so when I got in I concentrated on studying, not wearing weird clothes and protesting!

However, you were protesting soon enough after getting elected in 1977.

Yes. I was saying that the 1977 manifesto was the greatest load of shite ever poured on the Irish people. that made me nationally infamous in the first place and later led to my being booted out of the party.

Tabling that motion of ‘no confidence’ in Charlie Haughey in 1982 also led to Dessie O’Malley and Martin O’Donoghue leaving Government and, it’s alleged, to their families being subjected to a campaign of intimidation and abuse. Did that also happen to you?

Yes. We all received phone calls. I did and my wife did. And we received abusive letters. But you must remember that to some Fianna Fáil member I was the nearest thing to Satan because of what I’d done. That was a time when if the leader said ‘jump’ you jumped. So other people were thinking ‘What is this bastard from Kildare doing to our party?’ But I still believe what I was doing then was the best for the country and for the party. And what I was defending then everybody now has to accept in terms of the party’s economic policy…

Did you ever encounter anything of the legendary Haughey wrath?

Despite our differences and how our relationship may be perceived by the media, the truth is that he and I have enjoyed a good personal relationship throughout the years. So much so that we can tell each other to go take a run and jump and still get on… Yes he tore strips off me but when he did I’d do the same thing because that’s also very much part of my own nature.

But despite our mutual best efforts we’ve both survived. My best efforts to get rid of him and his efforts to get rid of me have failed. And on that fundamental question of the economy nowadays I would have to applaud him. He is the man who turned things around. Garret and Dessie and the devil knows who all talked about it but did sweet bugger all. Charlie did and should be complimented for that…

But wasn’t there a price to pay? In your own constituency – as in many others – the Fianna Fáil vote is down whereas the Labour vote and the Workers Part vote is up. Doesn’t this suggest that Fianna Fáil is finally losing its grip on what used to be the core support for the party, the rural and working-class vote?

Overall we got roughly 44% in ’87 and in ’89, but, yes, I will agree that the make-up of that vote has changed, moved more towards the middle-class vote. And that does bother me. The greatest strength of Fianna Fáil was that there was no class politics but it’s moving in that direction now. Fianna Fáil was always the catch-all party in this country. So yes, there is that danger now hanging over the party. I exclude Charlie Haughey from this as I believe he knows what he’s at: but the Fianna Fáil representatives may not be as in tune with the different type of electorate we now are representing as they should be. But I would still hate to see Fianna Fáil lose touch with its roots and the roots of this society.

In today’s papers there are reports that politicians may be involved in corruption in An Bord Pleanála and that in one case someone received a kickback of £50,000. What’s your reaction?

If there is corruption within the Planning Board I’ve no hesitation in agreeing that the gardaí act upon it in the first lace. And while I’ve no desire to pre-empt their enquiry I’d have to say it would be absolutely scandalous if politicians received that kind of money. No one could condone that. And the worst part of it all is that things like this feed into the public perception of ‘politicians lining their pockets again’ and forms the cynicism which is our greatest enemy – the notion that all politicians are only in it for what they can get out of it.

But it’s not just a media invention – there are serious questions raised, for example, by the Goodman issue, the Sugar Company controversy and now alleged corruption in An Bord Pleanála?

There’s corruption everywhere, in all walks of life. But Larry Goodman has become the bête-noir of Irish political life because he’s been so successful. He has made millions for the country and for himself so that brings forth the famous Irish begrudgery. Until it’s proved to me that anything about Larry Goodman is corrupt, I’ll say ‘Fair play to him’. I don’t think there is any question of corruption in the Goodman issue. And as for the wider question of corruption I’ve never encountered it as a politician myself. No one ever tried to corrupt me.

Maybe because I’m seen as the last person in the world these people would approach. So maybe I’m the wrong person to be asked these questions.

The biggest employer in your constituency is the army. Do you agree they have legitimate grievances in terms of pay?

Yes and I’m delighted that the Government has made it a priority to do something about it. As I said before the election, we could survive the political hassle of doing badly in Kildare because of this issue but in the long-term it is ill-advised and dangerous to have a demoralised security force. The thinking had gone around that nobody gave a damn about them, they were understandably pissed off and I’m delighted the Government has taken action.

But how can the public not be cynical about politicians in general and Fianna Fáil in particular when, before the election Michael Noonan was saying ‘There is no crisis in the army’ and Rory O’Hanlon was saying ‘There is no crisis in the health service’?

But you must differentiate between the two issues. I was well aware of the disquiet in the army for a number of years before this. But on a health issue I, who would regard myself as a good judge of the views of the people, must admit I wasn’t tuned into the sense of disquiet on the health issue. I know Charlie got pilloried for saying something similar but I believe he was telling the truth. I didn’t know there was the disquiet until I went out on the campaign.

Yet on the night the election was called, Prionsias de Rossa was able to say that as soon as Fianna Fáil got back out on the doorsteps they’d get a sharp shock in relation to the grief caused by cutbacks in the health service. Was the Workers Party more aware because it is more in touch with the people?

Yes. I would have to say that the Workers Party have the necessary people on the ground and as an organisation they are more in touch than any other political organisation. But on the health issue I myself canvassed people and said, ‘Does it affect you?’ They’d say ‘no’. ‘Does it affect your mother?’ ‘No. She’s dead’, they’d say. ‘So who does it affect?’ I’d ask and they’d say ‘Well, there’s a woman down the street and she knows someone…’ Everybody got it into their minds, because of the media, that everyone was suddenly going to die or all get sick together and end up on trollies in dark hospitals!

Isn’t that insensitive to the situation of people actually on the waiting list?

Problems about the waiting list go back donkey’s years. But, yes, of course there were legitimate problems in the health service, I’d never deny that. But I also believe our problem was that once the notion got in people’s minds it was impossible to move it. It wasn’t a big issue before that.

Maybe I am out of touch, but i the 27 months before the election, though it may have come up once or twice in meetings, there never was anything like the groundswell we encountered during the election.

Some suggest that if Charlie Haughey was so ignorant about an issue on which the election turned he shouldn’t be party leader.

I exonerate him from blame on that because I myself didn’t know. Nor, I believe, did most members of other parties…

As a betting man would you lay odds that Charlie Haughey won’t lead Fianna Fáil into the next election?

You’d have to know Charlie Haughey’s mind to answer that question. I’d say that for as long as he wants to be there he will be. But he may not want to be…

As a result of the coalition isn’t there a growing group of party members who don’t want him to remain leader??

It’d be stupid to say there’s no opposition within the party to coalition but that’s where I think Charlie has shown exceptional courage. The media might think he did it out of a lust for power but I personally think it was the bravest decision ever made by a Fianna Fáil leader because he knew he risked turning the Fianna Fáil organisation and grass roots against himself. He knew he’d antagonise them and I know he didn’t do it just to remain Taoiseach. And I believe he’s done a very good job in the last 27 months and if this Government continues on the same basis he’ll do an excellent job as well so I see no reason why he should be removed from the Fianna Fáil leadership and I would not support any attempt to remove him.

Some regard Jackie Fahey as the only Fianna Fáil TD at the moment who has the guts to stand up and say exactly what many others are secretly feeling. What’s your view of his actions?

Jackie Fahey probably does reflect a genuine concern and feeling among Fianna Fáil people, but not me. I believe in what Charlie Haughey did and I played a small part in it. But, yes, I can understand what Jackie Fahey is feeling. I think he’s wrong but then I think a lot of Fianna Fáil people are wrong about the coalition. This is the evolving nature of the party, the change in Irish politics and we have to learn to live with and work with that. I see it as the modernisation of Irish politics and I see nothing wrong with it at all; though I can see how to some traditional supporters it is a terrible shock.

The ‘small part’ you played was that you were the original intermediary between Mary Harney and Charles Haughey. Do you think people who voted for you in Kildare and fellow party members might see this as a betrayal?

Well, yes, there would be party members in Kildare who don’t like this at all. But as for the 9,000 people who voted for me I think they’d feel I did the right thing. But even if I knew the 9,000 said it was wrong that wouldn’t stop me doing it. All my political life I’ve done what I believe to be correct and people have to accept me as that…

It’s said that in your argument for coalition you suggested that U-turns are part of Fianna Fáil’s history right from the beginning when the original party turned its back on the IRA_and the manner in which they entered the Dail –

(cuts across) That is not an accurate quote. That’s what someone said at the Fianna Fáil party meeting which wasn’t reported. I did mention the changes we made in the past but my point was that the leader in those days had tough unpopular decisions to make but what they did was in the best interests of the country. Dev did go into the Dáil having major problems with the oath of allegiance. That was a tough decision. In 1932 Sinn Féin canvassed for the Government yet in the 1940s we allowed these people to die in jails, executed people who had fought side by side with us because that was in the best interests of the country. That was a tough decision. And that was my point.

But hardcore Republicans int he party would see the new coalition as just another example of Fianna Fáil selling out on its original principles.

Yes. And hardcore Republicans had trouble with extradition. But now you’ve hit on what troubles the very soul of Fianna Fáil these days, that great dichotomy, our being totally torn in two directions. We are the Nationalist, Republican party and yet we’ve had to do in Government things that tore at the heart of the old organisation and the party. Deep down and going way back, as with many Fianna Fáil supporters, I’m one who believed that having anything at all to do with the Brits was a tearing at the very heart of the party. Yet as a National party in Government we have to do what is right for the Irish people and internationally, and that includes having an extradition treaty with Great Britain. But in my own psyche there is that tension, that battle going on between what I call the ‘breeding’ side of my brain and the side that is logical. And that dichotomy is brought into sharp focus when it comes to Northern Ireland.

In what way exactly?

The birthright was ‘Jesus Christ, we’re always against the Brits and have to get a United Ireland’. Yet the logical side now says ‘we must have talks, must negotiate, must have developed Government in Northern Ireland, must participate, must have extradition with these people’. And you don’t, I believe, have to scratch Irish people very much to find this latent Nationalism. We have 800 years of history to pull out of our psyches in just the last 60 years. Jesus, even 20 years ago when I was in school we were told in our history classes that all the oppression we suffered from the penal days, the famine and everything else, the Brits were the cause of it all. And in my home, as a child, I’d be told by my mother about the War Of Independence, the Civil War and which family fought on what side. Stuff like that is deep in the psyche of the Irish people and many have great difficulty coming to terms with that or looking at things from another angle, including myself.

Is part of your breeding, support for the IRA?

Look, I know people who are so peaceful they wouldn’t slap a dog on the bum to get him out of the way yet after six pints when the Wolfe Tones start singing ‘A Nation Once Again’ they’re up on chairs and if you say ‘Let’s march on the border now and take over’ they would! Or if an IRA_man commits a horrible crime and the Brits want him extradited the same people are up in arms saying ‘No’.

Including you?

Yes. I have a problem with extradition, I won’t deny that.

Are you the kind of Fianna Fáil TD who supports the IRA_cause but can’t support their methods?

I’ve changed. In the ’60s I was a rabid Nationalist defending what I saw as the cause our fathers fought for. This was before there was an IRA_as we know it today. But you learn to accept that you can’t achieve anything by force. At least that’s the logical argument. But if we’re all honest with ourselves we have to ask ourselves would any progress have been made, including the Anglo Irish Agreement, if there had just been politicians talking and no violence?_Maybe I shouldn’t say that but it’s true. In all our dealings with Great Britain in even our century there’s never been a decade where there hasn’t been violence because of the armed struggle. And as long as there is partition on this island you’ll always have young Irish people prepared to take up arms. The British Government will not finally fix it. And there’s really no point in my thinking one thing and saying another.

As a Constitutional politician I have to say I abhor the fact that people from all sides have been killed. I abhor what the IRA_do but maybe if I’d been born in Derry I’d have been drawn into the armed struggle. Maybe if I’d been born 60 miles further up the rod I’d be in Long Kesh today. And though I don’t condone the thuggery and violence and killing I do feel sorry for people who are drawn into it. But there always will be people who’ll say ‘the only way to get the Brits to see sense is through the barrel of a gun’ and and that’s the saddest thing of all.

But couldn’t what you’re saying be interpreted as support for the belief that a long-term political solution can only be achieved through the use of violence?

I didn’t say that. But I am saying that the IRA_can say ‘If we didn’t do this there’d be no progress at all’. And that’s what’s wrong about it all. And here I’m just speaking about a historical fact, not condoning violence. If you were the normal kind of media guy interested only in headlines you might be tempted to slap that tag on me but I don’t believe Hot Press would do that. What I’m saying to you is I do not condone violence…

Would you accept that at this stage in our history most voters don’t give a damn about such issues as unification or the restoration of the Irish language?

Most voters don’t give a damn, I agree.

Does that not make Fianna Fáil’s base, and very basis for being, redundant?

No. If you didn’t have Fianna Fáil, a Constitutional party articulating what i fundamentally a Sinn Féin or IRA_cause – the reunification aim – then there would have been even more, continuing violence throughout our century. We were the party that gathered that form of electorate together. As for the restoration of the Irish language the only way to revive it would be to ban it!_If we banned it we’d all learn it. Apart from that, no, we haven’t been able to restore it as the spoken language of our people.

Do you believe that traditional Fianna Fáil supporters merely pay lip-service to supporting the Anglo-Irish Agreement?

Yes. But it would be wrong to portray it as a big issue in Fianna Fáil’s people’s minds at all nowadays. And those who are paying just lip service probably do so because of the dichotomy I referred to earlier. But I would say that if Fianna Fáil is not prepared to change with the times we will become redundant as a political party… People have to accept change. Politics no longer is as it used to be when we’d just wave the green flag and everybody’d come out and vote for us. Those days are gone.

What do you think of Mrs. Thatcher?

I’m a maze of contradictions on most issues but I really do have a contradictory position on Mrs. Thatcher. I like her balls. I admire even my biggest enemy politically if they have balls and guts, even fellas that have beaten me into the ground. So I do admire her because she has so much balls, but on the other hand she’s a tyrannical, bloody bitch. Wort of all is her total lack of sensitivity to the Irish problem and it’s not just confined to Mrs. Thatcher – the British Establishment just don’t understand the Irish. And Mrs. Thatcher is a prime example of the British Establishment…

So does her ‘insensitivity’ cripple any hope for discussions that might help lead to a political solution?

The strange thing about Mrs. Thatcher is that if any person is to solve the Irish problem she’s the person!_Because she is so ‘thick’ in her way of doing things she is the one person who could bulldoze things through the British Parliament.

Do you think Charles Haughey was cleverly feeding her ego when he suggested she could get into the history books if she was part of the solution?

Exactly. She is very egotistical as all politicians are. The strange thing is that she and Mr. Haughey, the very two people that at one time could have been labelled ‘least likely to succeed’ in this, just might succeed in pushing something through, whatever the motive…

Patrick Pearse once said ‘The man who, in the name of Ireland, accepts as ‘a final settlement’ anything less, by one fraction of one iota than separation from England, is guilty of so immense an infidelity, so immense a crime against the Irish nation that it were better for that man that he had not been born." Do you agree?

I’m familiar with that quote and all I can say to it is that I do still believe that the reunification of the country is our most important aim. Partition is the cause of violence in the country and so I will always want to get rid of it.

But what of the argument that the severity of such edicts and the intractable positions they impose on believers, be they De Valera or Haughey, limit the party’s potential for development?

I don’t believe it’s that which will stop the party from evolving. But such beliefs do form the one thread running through us all. Most Fianna Fáil supporters mightn’t summarise it as you did there in that quote by Pearse but that’s the very kind of thing we believe makes us what we are and makes us different from all other parties. That type of thread has always run through the Fianna Fáil organisation. My father had it, his people, my people and that’s the kind of thread that binds us. If we lose that what have we got?

Shouldn’t Pearse’s contribution, and Dev’s, continually be critically re-assessed or must they always be the inviolate, "sacred cows" of Irish history?

No. No. No. I must admit here that I feel that the ‘breeding’ side of my brain is responding to these questions rather than the logical side!_Jaysus I once said of my own home that if my mother had to choose between God and Dev, I wouldn’t be sure who’d get second preference!_So this is a problem for me. It is, I’ll admit, difficult for me to even apply the phrase ‘sacred cows’ to the people you mention. I can’t. It’s simply hard for me to look at things that way.

One commentator said of De Valera that ‘The creation of a virtually homogeneous Catholic state, of which he was the prime architect, proved to be the greatest hindrance to the prospect of Irish unity’. What’s your view?

(Pause) I believe that Dev’s idea of involving the Catholic Church ethos in the constitution has been a stumbling block but no more than that. The Unionists have used the idea of us clinging to that Catholic ethos as a stick to bat us with, that’s the real problem. You have these two trains, Nationalists and Unionists and no meeting point… And yes I do believe that any constitution should be non-denominational and I must accept what you say about the Irish constitution. The Roman Catholic ethos of the time was imbued into Dev’s philosophy and it’s definitely not what I’d embody into a constitution. But I do not accept, to reply to your quote, that this was the ‘greatest hindrance’ to progress we could have made with the Northern Ireland population. Besides everybody knows that the grip of the Catholic church has been loosening, especially over say the last 12 years…

It’s also said that Fianna Fáil, as a party of pragmatists rather than ideologues, is fundamentally out of step with developments in European politics and that, as a consequence of this it might ‘vegetate in the bogs of history’. Do you agree?

There is that danger, yes. That’s why I’ve often compared Fianna Fáil and, for that matter, Fine Gael, as roughly the same brand of washing powder, because we don’t have an ideological base. Whereas the Workers Party and Labour do. And because they have, I believe that sometime in the future the centre-right parties will be forced into an alliance and we’ll then have the necessary ideological base of being a centre-right, Free-Enterprise, laissez-faire Conservative type party. Ireland has resisted that change but can no longer. Then we will finally end up with a clear Left and Right division in Irish politics, as with the European model. And yes I do agree that if Fianna Fáil doesn’t develop along these lines it jut may ‘vegetate in the bogs of history’.