The Boss: Charles J. Haughey in Government

by Joe Joyce, Peter Murtagh

(Haughey is generally regarded as the dominant Irish politician of his generation, as well as the most controversial. Upon entering government in the early 1960s, Haughey became the symbol of a new vanguard of Irish ministers, with a promising future in service to the Republic. As Taoiseach, he is credited by some economists as starting the positive transformation of the economy in the late 1980s. However, his career was also marked by several major scandals. Haughey was implicated in the Arms Crisis of 1970, which nearly destroyed his career. His political reputation revived, his tenure as Taoiseach was then damaged by the sensational GUBU Affair in 1982; his party leadership was challenged four times, each time unsuccessfully, earning Haughey the nickname The Great Houdini. Revelations about his role in a phone tapping scandal forced him to resign as Taoiseach and retire from politics in 1992.
Further scandals emerged after Haughey's retirement, when revelations of corruption, embezzlement, tax evasion and a 27-year extra-marital affair destroyed his reputation. Still mired in scandal, he died of prostate cancer in 2006 at the age of eighty)

400 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1983

About the author

Joe Joyce is the author of five thrillers: ECHOLAND, ECHOBEAT and ECHOWAVE (spy novels set during the Second World War in neutral Dublin), THE TRIGGER MAN (set during the Irish 'Troubles' in the late 1980s) and OFF THE RECORD (set in the 1970s world of Irish journalism), as well as a history/biography of THE GUINNESSES and a critically acclaimed play,THE TOWER, about James Joyce and Oliver St John Gogarty. He is co-author with Peter Murtagh of THE BOSS, the classic account of Irish politician Charles Haughey in power, and BLIND JUSTICE, about a celebrated miscarriage of justice. He has worked as a journalist for The Irish Times, The Guardian, and Reuters news agency.

Reviews

[Pádraig Mac Oscair · Rating 4 out of 5]

Finally, a book about Charlie Haughey that gets across how his real importance to Irish history is as our greatest soap opera villain.

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

A forensically detailed account, with the pace of a thriller, of one of the most controversial periods and most controversial figure in Irish political history. The fact it was published in 1983, contemporary to the events it examines, heightens its explosiveness.

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

thinking: even if most of it has to be attributed to his own personal corruption, Haughey as the last of a clientelist / developmentalist tendency in Fianna Fáil, given his tendency to personally oversee the nationalisation of failing industries against a growing PD pressure group with their fiscal prudence dogma. (true to form O'Malley is represented here as objecting to the construction of transport infrastructure, which would have wound up tens of times more expensive if he had succeeded in delaying it). it was good that Bruce Arnold had his phone tapped and we could do with more of that sort of thing these days

'Haughey summoned Harney to his office, whee he told her she had become very petty and had been acting like a schoolgirl. Harney snapped back that it was he who had become petty. Haughey demanded examples. Harney said he had struct certain TDs names of his Christmas card list. Haughey denied having done any such thing; in front of Harney he rang O'Malley and asked if he had got his Christmas card. O'Malley said he hadn't, and Haughey hung up'.

[Ronan Doyle · Rating 4 out of 5]

A breathless old gossip of a book—no bad thing. Much of Haughey's misdeeds are impressed on the national consciousness by now from decades of drip-feed revelation; hard to imagine how incendiary this must have been released while he was still at the top of the pile. Joyce and Murtagh aren't quite the Woodward and Bernstein of Ireland, but they have here—to nab a self-congratulatory phrase from Charlie himself—done the state some service in leaving us this, especially as modern reassessments of their subject seem to gather pace.

[Patrick Flavin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great summary of the time