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Last Updated: Dec 19th, 2007 - 13:17:15 |
Charles Haughey, former Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), who died on Tuesday, was a controversial politician who inspired great loyalty that was matched in equal measure, by disdain.
The prism of partisanship generally distorts views and judgments, in particular at the time of the passing of a former political leader.
On the one hand, exaggeration is the stock-in-trade of politics. For any holder of offices of State for an extended period, there will always be a shopping list that can be reeled off as evidence of accomplishment. Items on such lists are not often benchmarked in terms of consequence and what would have been expected in such a role, as a matter of course.
On the other hand, those who hate an individual for one or more reasons, can wittingly or unwittingly discount some real achievements. Just think of people who hate Tony Blair because of Iraq, who cannot concede that he has had a record of accomplishment.
As regards one issue of significant consequence and Haughey, there is no individual politician who can be ascribed major credit for creating the groundwork for our current prosperity. The Dells and Intels arrived because there was an established US multinational sector in place with local suppliers that had its genesis in measures that had been taken by the governments of John A. Costello and Sean Lemass.
IDA Ireland was established as an independent State agency by the Industrial Development Authority Act 1950; The tax exemption on profits from manufacturing exports was introduced in 1956. In 1955, the then Minister for Finance Gerard Sweetman, had made an inspired choice of the thirty-nine year old Thomas Kenneth (TK) Whitaker for Secretary of the Department of Finance. In 1958, the now renowned architect of the modern Irish economy Dr. Whitaker, was responsible for the seminal paper Economic Development, the blueprint for the move from protectionism to free trade and the modernisation of the economy through the incentivising of multinational companies to establish manufacturing operations in Ireland.
Charles Haughey certainly deserves credit for establishment of the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), which is a singular success.
The article below, was first published on June 29, 2005
The year 1975 was a good one for Charles Haughey. He was restored to the Fianna Fáil Front Bench and was planning the building of a summer home on his island of Inishvickillaun, off the coast of County Kerry, despite the rise in his personal bank borrowings to £400,000 pounds, according to the Moriarty Tribunal. However, for both the rich and the rest of the population, the year was pretty bleak.
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| 1981, Charles J. Haughey addresses the assembled audience at the opening of the de Valera Monument in Ennis, County Clare (Photo www.ennis.ie) |
The quadrupling of oil prices in the aftermath of the 1973 Arab-Israeli war was having an impact as inflation jumped to double-digit figures. In a society of rampant tax fraud, the taxation of farm income had been introduced in the previous year and following howls of protest by the wealthy, capital gains, gift and wealth tax was due to take effect. An individual could simply trouser any level of money from the sale of a business and not be liable for a penny in taxes.
The Fine Gael-Labour Government had proposed to introduce tax on capital gains in 1974 and there had been a 12-month opening for business to change hands before a tax of 26% would apply on gains (income tax rates were then as high as 77%). One of the companies that took advantage of the zero capital gains tax window was the company that owned The Irish Times. By 1975, The Irish Times was struggling financially as the impact of the economic recession had been compounded by the funding from company resources of the shareholders, who had cashed in their investments in 1974 and converted the operation into a trust.
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| Robert Penn Warren (1905-1989) who immortalised the politician Huey Long in his 1946 novel All the King's Men, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1947 |
It was a time when most self-employed were fiddling taxes on a massive scale. Doctors, dentists, solicitors and so on, were reporting income, which suggested that they were living at subsistence level. The Revenue Commissioners dispatched teams around the country to log business establishments on a street-by-street basis. At a football game in Croke Park between Dublin and Kerry, a Dublin supporter held up a placard with the slogan- “Come on the Taxpayers.” In a 1979 Dáil reply to Labour T.D. Barry Desmond, the Minister for Finance confirmed that in 1975, there were 1,170 people in the country who made wealth tax returns of up to £250,000; there were 257 persons who made returns of up to £500,000 and 60 persons who made returns of over £500,000. Desmond said that “it is no wonder they screamed blue murder when they had to pay £1,000 out of £500,000 in tax—a miserable £1,000 tax levy, which is about, on average, all they had to hand over.”
American actor Broderick Crawford headed the cast of an Irish production of the play That Championship Season, in 1975. Crawford had won an Oscar as Best Actor for his leading role in the 1949 film All the King’s Men, which was based on the acclaimed 1946 novel by Robert Penn Warren. The story was inspired by the extraordinary rule and abuse of power of Governor (1928-32) and US Senator (1932-35) Huey Long, the self-styled Kingfish of Louisiana. In the film, Crawford plays the main character Willie Stark, who overcomes poverty and moved by widespread injustice and corruption, campaigns to change the system but greed, lust for power and ego turns him into the very thing that he fought against. The other principal character is newspaperman Jack Burden who supports the initially naïve Stark in taking "the hick vote" away from the political machine. Stark in office, builds roads, schools and hospitals but turns the State government into a virtual dictatorship. Burden tries to live a life avoiding all moral issues and having got too close to Stark, it’s too late when he realises what a monster he has helped to create.
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| Broderick Crawford playing cards with future President Ronald Reagan, in the 1940's |
Whatever the parallels between Huey Long, Wille Stark and the career of Charles Haughey, an individual politician does not rise to power in a vacuum. In Irish society, where there was not any significant ideological divide, Haughey was able to present himself as the populist who represented the interests of the people at the bottom of the economic pyramid while at the same time, being the rich man’s friend. In an Ireland where the left was weak, he never had to alienate his wealthy benefactors by peddling “squeeze the rich” policies.
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| The 1949 Oscar for Best Film |
When PAYE workers revolted in 1979 with an estimated 200,000 workers marching through Dublin city centre, it didn’t need political leadership. In 1978 PAYE had accounted for 87% of all tax and in the 1979 Budget, the Fianna Fáil Government introduced a 2% levy on the value of farm produce. It was vigoursly resisted by the Irish Farmers’ Association and the Government caved in and withdrew the measure. This is what set off the reaction.
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| Charles Haughey (1925-2006), came from a relatively poor background in North Dublin, but used his political power to get wealthy businessmen to fund a lifestyle similar to the English landed gentry whom he claimed to despise. Haughey was leader of the principal Irish political party Fianna Fáil from 1979-1992 and was Taoiseach (Prime Minister) on three occasions during this period |
Haughey was viewed as an effective politician and in a society where tax fraud wasn’t a big deal and planning corruption was endemic, the reality that his lifestyle did not match his income, was irrelevant to many people. It is inconceivable for example, that a Haughey type politician would have become Prime Minister of Sweden or that a Swedish bank would have agreed to write off a politician's personal borrowings, because it feared him. When Haughey opposed the first divorce referendum in the 1980’s because of the damage divorce would do to the family, no mainstream media outlet had the courage to expose the hypocrisy of the position.
There were many fellow travellers on Haughey’s coattails and like the Jack Burden character, they saw no evil and heard no evil. A politician like Haughey, can only survive in a fragile democracy where respect for the rule of law is qualified. How much has really changed in the intervening period?
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| Broderick Crawford (1911-1986), winner of the Oscar for Best Actor for his stunning potrayal of the character Willie Stark |
Today, after years of public hearings on planning corruption, the system for determining the price of development land, remains unchanged. In 1973, a report by a Government-appointed committee (the Kenny Report) recommended that local authorities should be empowered to acquire land for housing for which the owner would receive its current (typically agricultural) use value plus a maximum of 25 percent. Land rezoning is similar to the illegal drug trade. Who should be surprised when corruption is promoted where the value of land can change twenty-fold through a political decision?
One other key area that hasn’t changed from Haughey’s heyday is the culture of passing the buck. Be it the Gardaí in Donegal, Office of Public Works property transactions; the fiasco of the €62 million National Aquatic Centre where even after it's revealed in an engineer's report that the roof collapsed not due to wind primarily but because of faulty design, a Government Minister still insisted that the damage was solely caused by a "tornado"; negligence in hospitals or a cracked pavement that goes unrepaired for months or years and causes injury, where does the buck stop?
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| Huey Long (1893-1935) Library of Congress photo. As Governor, he sponsored many reforms that endeared him to the rural poor. An ardent enemy of corporate interests, he championed the "little man" against the rich and privileged. A farm boy from the piney woods of North Louisiana, he was colorful, charismatic, controversial, and always just skating on the edge |
Later this year, a remake of the film All the King’s Men will be released. Readers will be able to see for themselves what can happen with a cocktail of populist politics, a culture of buck passing, a tolerance of corruption and a cowed media.
In 1935, Huey Long had his book My First Days in the White House, published and President Franklin Roosevelt termed him “the most dangerous man in America.” On September 8, 1935 Long was shot by an assassin in the State Capitol Building in Baton Rouge, and died two days later. The assassin Dr. Carl Weiss had been angered that Long had spread a rumour that his wife’s father was a black man.
The new All the King’s Men is in post-production and stars Sean Penn, Jude Law and Kate Winslet.;
© Copyright 2007 by Finfacts.com
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