Little piece of advice. Say you’re a politician and they decide to make a TV series about your life. If the guy they cast to play you is Lord Petyr Baelish himself, consider that you may have been a shady motherfucker.

CJ was already fairly synonymous with shady motherfuckery before he even became Taoiseach. As Minister for Finance in the late sixties under Jack Lynch, Haughey became embroiled in the Arms Crisis. See, it was around this time that the Troubles were being particularly Troublesome, by which I mean things were threatening to blow up into a full on civil war and hundreds of Catholic refugees were fleeing south to escape the violence. Haughey and another minister named Neil Blaney were put in charge of a committee to distribute humanitarian aid to Catholic communities in Northern Ireland that were under siege and apparently at some point the group decided: “Know what this situation needs? Guns.”

 

Soooo…a plan was hatched to import weapons into the country to be given to the IRA with the help of a Belgian Nazi (I am not making any of that up).

While that plan would, no doubt, have worked BRILLIANTLY, the Garda Síochána (the fuzz) sussed it out and informed Lynch what Haughey had been up to. Lynch did……………….nothing, so the Gardaí instead went to our buddy Liam Cosgrave and essentially said “look, there’s all kinds of treasonous shady motherfuckery going on here, can SOMEBODY do some governing or is that too much to ask?” Cosgrave put pressure on Lynch and Haughey and his co-conspirators were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for supporting terrorism.

No, of course not. Haughey was expelled from the cabinet but remained as a back bencher, slowly rebuilding his political influence and waiting for the right moment to strike like a cancer in remission. He was eventually recalled to the front bench in 1975, became Minister for Health in 1977 and after Lynch resigned in 1979 Haughey was chosen to succeed him as Taoiseach. The frustrating thing about Haughey is that, unlike Cowen, he absolutely had the ability and the intelligence to be a fantastic Taoiseach. He did really good work in the Ministry for Health, spear-heading the first anti-smoking campaigns and legalising contraception.

Plus, in a country where politicians tend to be less “Hollywood ugly” and more “circus ugly” he actually cut a rather dashing figure. He was charming and charismatic in a line of work where charisma and charm are in very short supply and he inspired incredible loyalty from many of his followers. But Haughey had ambitions and ego far beyond what could be satisfied by the premiership of a small, peripheral European state. Haughey dreamed of leveraging the relatively modest position of Taoiseach and becoming a statesman of global significance.

Know what’s crazy? He kinda…sorta…did? Unlike almost every other Taoiseach on this list, Haughey had a huge impact not just on Ireland but on the world at large, even though he’s certainly not famous outside of this island. How did that happen?

Okay, little bit of backstory required. And apologies, it involves the European Union which means it’s going to be super complicated.

So, the upper house of the European Parliament is the Council of the European Union, and it’s run by the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, to be confused with the President of the European Council. Yes I said “to be confused” because face it, you’re going to confuse them and that was probably the point. Anyway. The presidency is rotating which means that every country in the EU gets a turn at basically running the entire continent.

Right, so. In 1990 Ireland held the presidency and there was a big summit in Dublin to discuss piddling inconsequential political minutiae like trade reform and tarriffs and oh yeah THE BERLIN WALL HAS JUST COME DOWN REALITY AS WE KNOW IT HAS CRUMBLED WHAT DO WE DO!!!!?!

Weird as it might seem now, after the wall came down German reunification was by no means a sure thing. Most countries in Europe were decidedly less than giddy at the idea of Germany once again being large and in charge   (jeez, you make one mistake). The British were particularly opposed, because Margaret Thatcher is a monster from European folklore who sneaks in through the cracks in the windows to feed on the tears of disobediant German children before snatching them away to her cottage in the forest that runs on chicken legs. The French, more understandably, were also opposed but more in a “well I suppose we could be convinced.” kind of way. What the French wanted was closer economic and political integration for Europe, essentially the basis for the modern EU and it was Haughey, in his capacity as president of the European presidency of the Council of the European Union council, who was able to get enough of the other nations on board in exchange for French support for German unity. This, then, means Haughey played a crucial role in both the reunification of Germany and the foundation of the European common currency, i.e. two of the most important events in the history of post-war Europe.

So why isn’t he further up the list? Well, not to get judgey or anything, but he was kind of a crook. And by “kind of” I mean “holy shit”.

 Haughey was famous for buying things like fancy suits, race horses and…um…an island.