IT WAS A Saturday night in the main hall of the RDS in the mid1980s. The audience, which had been worked into a frenzy of excitement, was standing, dancing, on the chairs. But the subject of its worship was not U2, Bruce Springsteen or one of the other international rock acts that periodically lifted the gloom in the recession-hit Ireland of that era.

Incredible as it may seem in today's politically apathetic climate, the adoration was directed exclusively towards a politician. However, this was no ordinary politician, but one Charles J Haughey . . . the dominant and most controversial figure in Irish politics in the second half of the 20th Century.

Haughey was out of government. The disgrace of the GUBU era was still fresh in the memory, as was his Houdini -style survival in a series of incredibly bitter leadership challenges. The slightly aging figure standing at the podium had served two terms as Taoiseach, but without any tangible success to show for it.

Yet the reception Haughey was receiving was akin to a returning Messiah. The strains of 'Rise and Follow Charlie' filled the hall and the swaying masses made clear their unbridled passion for their leader. Jack Lynch before him and Bertie Ahern after him may have enjoyed wider popularity, but neither man ever attracted such devotion from the Fianna Fail masses.

Haughey revelled in the moment. A chieftain being acknowledged by 'his people'. For that was how he saw himself. He may have been a Republican, but certainly not in the French egalitarian sense. Not for him the traditional de Valera/Fianna Fail values of austerity and simplicity. He had a taste for French cuisine, fine wine, expensive clothes, and high art, buying a fine house and hunting with hounds.

The contradictions in Haughey's persona, and in his legacy, are too numerous to ignore: the fire-in-the-belly Republican from Donnycarney; the darling of the working classes who lived like a lord of the manor; the brilliant minister who was seized by indecision on becoming Taoiseach; the politician who gave us the infamous Talbot workers deal as well as the incredible success story that is the IFSC; the wrecker of the economy in the early 1980s turned saviour seven years later; the 'teapot diplomat' who had been at the centre of the Arms Trial and subsequently opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement; the super-confident, at times arrogant, whizz-kid who felt the need to surround himself with the trappings of an aristocrat.

He was an intellectual snob, who despised the bourgeois values of businessmen he regarded as boring, dull and uncultured, but who relied on hand-outs from them to fund his opulent lifestyle. He was the politician who told the country that we were living "way beyond our means" at a time when he was himself up to his neck in debt. He regarded himself as a man of destiny yet, within hours of becoming Taoiseach, he was willing to tolerate a 29-year-old upstart demanding: "Tell me the truth. How much do you f**king owe?" He was the most divisive politician since de Valera, a leader who managed to skillfully run a coalition government with his arch nemesis.

Despite, or maybe because of these contradictions, his influence over four decades of the Irish state's existence was enormous. Even now, a decadeand-a-half after his resignation, he casts a long shadow over Irish politics.

In his resignation speech, he quoted Othello . . . "I have done the state some service and they know it, no more of that" . . . but to his many critics, Haughey was more Iago than Othello.

The early years AS FAR back as 1960, Gerry Boland forecast that Haughey would one day "drag down the party in the mire". Boland's fears were shared by others. It was an open secret in the party that other senior figures, most notably the hugely respected founding fathers, Frank Aiken and Sean MacEntee, were seriously worried about his growing influence.

Yet such views did nothing to delay a meteoric rise within the party. He had qualified as an accountant and set up the firm of Haughey Boland in 1951 with his old school friend Harry Boland. But Haughey's real ambitions were clearly political. He was elected to the Dail in 1957 and was promoted in 1960 by the Taoiseach, his father-inlaw Sean Lemass, to parliamentary secretary. In the same year, he acquired a house in Grangemore in Raheny, on 45 acres of land.

The following year, Haughey was elevated to the cabinet as justice minister. He quickly made an impression, introducing legislation such as the Succession Act, which protected the inheritance rights of wives, and the Extradition Act. He also drew up a 10point programme in his first month of office, highlighting the crushing of the IRA as a primary objective. The Special Criminal Court was reactivated and in less than a year the IRA called off its campaign.

Haughey was a young man in a hurry. The powerful secretary of the Department of Justice, Peter Berry, later wrote that "while he was in Justice, Haughey was a dynamic minister. He was a joy to work with and the longer he stayed, the better he got."

But the top civil servant also recalled a less attractive side to Haughey's personality. When Berry objected to a blatantly political promotion in the immigration service, Haughey flung the departmental file at him and the papers were strewn across the floor of the minister's office.

While Haughey's next portfolio was less successful . . . as agriculture minister, he became involved in a series of controversies with the powerful farmers' lobby . . . his flamboyant lifestyle ensured that his profile continued to soar. Around this time, Conor Cruise O'Brien, later to become an arch political opponent, wrote of him: "Haughey's general style of living was remote from the traditional Republican and de Valera austerities. He had made a great deal of money and he obviously enjoyed spending it, in a dashing 18thcentury style, of which horses were conspicuous symbols. He was a small man and, when dismounted, he strutted rather. His admirers thought he resembled the Emperor Napoleon, some of whose better known mannerisms he cultivated. He patronised, and that is the right word, the arts. He was an aristocrat in the proper sense of the word: not a nobleman or even a gentleman, but one who believed in the right of the best people to rule, and that he himself was the best of the best people. He was at any rate better, or at least more intelligent and interesting, than most of his colleagues. He was considered a competent minister, and spoke in parliament with bored but conclusive authority. There were enough rumours about him to form a legend of sorts."

Haughey added to the legend by socialising with cabinet colleagues such as Donagh O'Malley and Brian Lenihan, becoming, in the memorable words of Tim Pat Coogan, "the epitome of the men in the mohair suits".

Stories about their drinking exploits in the Fianna Fail haunt of Groome's Hotel were legion. They also frequented the upmarket Russell Hotel, where Haughey socialised with financiers and builders.

By the mid-1960s, Haughey was a candidate for the leadership of Fianna Fail. However, amid fears that the party would split between Haughey and Colley factions, Haughey made a tactical decision to withdraw from the 1966 leadership contest and backed Jack Lynch. In return, Lynch made him finance minister. The country was in the middle of an economic boom, allowing Haughey scope for some imaginative reforms. He introduced free travel, subsidised electricity for OAPs and endeared himself to the arty set by abolishing income tax for artistic work.

He also introduced a special provision in the 1969 Finance Act that opponents would claim provided a direct financial benefit to himself. In the general election of that year, Haughey's wealth, long a subject of fascination, became a big issue. The Evening Herald revealed that the minister had sold his home at Grangemore to well-known property developer Matt Gallagher for over £200,000 and bought the Abbeville estate, the former summer home for lord lieutenants in Ireland, partly designed by James Gandon, and its 250 acres for £140,000. Haughey's line of defence . . . one he was to stick to when questions were raised about the origin of his wealth, right up to the setting-up of the tribunals in Dublin Castle . . . was to object "to my private affairs being used in this way. It is a private matter between myself and the purchaser."

But Fine Gael's Gerald Sweetman claimed that Haughey had benefited from legislation he had introduced himself, amending part of the 1965 Finance Act so that he did not have to pay tax on the profits. Haughey was left in the clear when, after he referred the matter to the revenue commissioners, they reported that "no liability to income tax or surtax would have arisen" even if the act had not been amended.

At around this time, Fianna Fail was also facing criticism over what were believed to be growing links between politics and business, best epitomised by Taca, the fundraising organisation of 500 businessmen who attended monthly dinners at the Gresham Hotel and, in return for contributions to the party, were given special access to ministers.

Although traditionalists in the party also attended Taca dinners, Haughey, who organised the first dinner, was the politician most associated with it.

"Kevin Boland later recalled that first dinner attended by all the cabinet. "We were all organised by Haughey and sent to different tables around the room.

The extraordinary thing about my table was that everybody at it was in some way or other connected with the construction industry." Inevitably, Taca provided plenty of ammunition to opposition TDs who questioned the ethos of the organisation.

There were also persistent rumours about a link between Haughey and property developer John Byrne, who had built O'Connell Bridge House, which was then leased by the government.

The sense of unease about Fianna Fail's changing values was not confined to the opposition. In 1967, Haughey's rival George Colley urged those attending an Ogra Fianna Fail conference in Galway not to be dispirited "if some people in high places appear to have low standards". Despite Colley's denials, the comment was widely regarded as a reference to Haughey.

In the wilderness BUT Fianna Fail and Haughey were soon to be facing into a crisis far more serious than questions about the appropriateness of the links between ministers and the building industry.

For the first 40 years of its existence, Fianna Fail only had to deal in abstract with what Kevin Boland described as "the fundamental reason for the existence of the political party to which we all belonged". . . ie the ending of partition.

The outbreak of the troubles in the North would bring an end to this cosy situation and threaten the very existence of the party.

Haughey had never been seen as a particularly hardline Republican, in the mould of Boland or Neil Blaney. It had not gone unnoted within the party that his Fianna Fail lineage was non-existent . . . his father had been a Free State army officer. However, his father and mother had come from Swatragh in Co Derry, and the plight of northern nationalists was a regular dinnertime conversation in the Haughey household when the future Taoiseach was growing up. On VE Day in 1945, a young Haughey, a student in UCD at the time, had burned a Union Jack outside Trinity College.

Yet it was still a shock to many when it emerged that Haughey was one of the hawks in a cabinet divided over what to do about the deteriorating situation in the North during 1969. Haughey was put in charge of a £100,000 fund to relieve distress for the nationalist population in the North. But the evidence available suggests that Haughey and Blaney were following their own Northern strategy. Haughey summoned army intelligence officers and IRA leaders to meet him, and even invited British ambassador Gilchrist to Abbeville to discuss the future of the North. At that meeting in early October, Haughey told the ambassador there was nothing he would not sacrifice, including the position of the Catholic church and neutrality, if the British would give a secret commitment to move towards Irish unity. He offered NATO bases on Irish soil as part of the deal.

Matters came to a head in May 1970 with the sensational sacking by Lynch of Haughey and Blaney from the cabinet. The two men were brought before the courts and charged with attempting to import arms. The meteoric rise had come to a shuddering halt.

Acquitted of the charges, Haughey make vague challenging noises in the direction of his party leader but it quickly became apparent that Lynch was in total control of Fianna Fail.

While Blaney and Boland left Fianna Fail, Haughey swallowed hard and stayed. He knew he would never be Taoiseach if he left the party, but the medicine was particularly unpalatable.

Not only did he have to suffer the indignity of backing Lynch, but Haughey had to vote confidence in former cabinet colleague Jim Gibbons, whose testimony at the arms trial had flatly contradicted his own.

As well as eating humble pie, Haughey had to stomach hundreds of chickenand-chip meals as he set about his own rehabilitation by travelling the length and breadth of the country talking to any group in Fianna Fail willing to invite him. He was accompanied on these trips by PJ Mara, who was to become one of his closest political confidants and a legendary government press secretary to Haughey's governments.

It was hard work, but the slog paid off, building on the huge reservoir of support for him in the grassroots of the organisation. Although he had always denied the gun-running charges, the arms trial only added to the whiff of sulphur around him and appealed to many in the party who remained steadfastly anti-partition.

The comeback kid BY 1975, Lynch bowed to the inevitable and returned Haughey to the front bench. Two years later, Fianna Fail was back in government with a 20-seat majority and, seven years after being fired from cabinet, Haughey was back as a minister . . . this time in Health. In his new job, Haughey added to his populist image by distributing free toothbrushes to every child in the country. He also introduced the Family Planning Bill that allowed married people to buy contraceptives with a prescription, memorably describing it as "an Irish solution to an Irish problem".

However, Haughey never lost sight of the bigger prize. Despite, or maybe because of, the large Dail majority, Lynch started to lose his grip on the party. The party establishment was firmly behind George Colley to succeed Lynch who, it was widely known, intended to step down. If Colley had the insiders in his camp, Haughey was relying on newer, younger and hungry TDs outside the centre of power . . . the likes of Ray MacSharry, Albert Reynolds, Padraig Flynn, Sean Doherty, Charlie McCreevy and Bertie Ahern.

There was a feeling among some sections of the party that Fianna Fail under Lynch had drifted from its Republican roots and they saw Haughey as the man to return them there. In December 1979, Lynch announced his resignation as Taoiseach and Fianna Fail leader. Unlike 13 years earlier, there would be no compromise candidate. It was a straight fight. Colley against Haughey: The old guard against the young turks.

The entire cabinet bar Haughey and Michael O'Kennedy supported Colley, but it wasn't enough. To the horror of the Colley camp, Haughey won the day by 44 votes to 38. The party was hugely divided.

It was that knowledge of the bitterness and division in Fianna Fail that would colour the speech made by opposition leader Garret FitzGerald on the day of Haughey's nomination for Taoiseach. FitzGerald would be sharply criticised for referring to Haughey's "flawed pedigree" . . . a speech that was witnessed by Haughey's elderly mother sitting in the visitors' gallery.

But the savaging by FitzGerald wasn't the most pressing issue for Haughey at that time. We now know that his personal finances were deep in the red, and with AIB pressing for Haughey's £1mplus debt to be repaid, it required urgent intervention.

While Haughey would later claim that his devoted friend and accountant Des Traynor had handled his financial affairs, it subsequently emerged that Patrick Gallagher was told by Haughey days after his election that he needed £750,000 to clear his debts. With help from wealthy benefactors, Haughey's financial problems eased for a time.

The same could not be said for the public finances. After an impressive start, when Haughey told the nation in a televised broadcast that it was living way beyond its means, the new Taoiseach bottled out of making the tough decisions required. He caved into vested interests and massively increased exchequer borrowing.

Haughey did achieve some early successes on the North. He refused to accept a purely internal solution, and in his famous bout of 'teapot' diplomacy with Margaret Thatcher, he persuaded the British to discuss the North in the context of the totality of relations between Ireland and Britain.

But he then infuriated Thatcher by overhyping the breakthrough . . .

implying that changes in the constitutional status of the North were on the way. To make matters worse, Haughey stood almost alone in the EEC by taking an anti-British stance over the Falklands War in 1982.

And, while this played well with the FF grassroots, it was a diplomatic disaster and ended any chance of further progress on the North.

In the general election of 1981, Haughey was facing a Fine Gael revitalised under FitzGerald. Despite taking a populist line on taxation, spending and Northern Ireland, Haughey lost power. Fianna Fail's performance was more than credible, winning 45.5% of the first preference vote, but the loss of two traditional FF seats to H-Block candidates put an end to Haughey's chance of winning the day.

However, by January of 1982, the Fine Gael-Labour government had collapsed and the ensuing general election produced another inconclusive result.

Thanks to the votes of the Workers Party and Tony Gregory . . . with whom Haughey had personally negotiated the controversial 'Gregory Deal' . . . Haughey was back as Taoiseach and felt sufficiently emboldened not to offer the position of Tanaiste to Colley.

The leadership heaves HOWEVER, the failure to win an overall majority gave Haughey's many opponents within Fianna Fail fresh ammunition. While moves to put Des O'Malley forward as an alternative candidate for Taoiseach after the election came to nothing, in October Charlie McCreevy, frustrated at Haughey's performance on the economy, put down a motion of no confidence. McCreevy's unilateral action caught the rest of the antiHaughey wing wholly unprepared.

And, with Haughey insisting on an 'open roll call', only 22 parliamentary party members voted against their leader.

1982 is now best remembered as the year of 'GUBU'. When the most-wanted man in the country, Malcolm McArthur, was apprehended in the home of the Attorney General (who was unaware that McArthur was a fugitive), Haughey described the strange series of events as 'grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented' to which Conor Cruise O'Brien applied the acronym 'GUBU'.

But it would not be until Haughey's government collapsed that a fuller picture would emerge of what was going on in that government. Ironically, it was Haughey's belated attempt to address the country's economic crisis that precipitated a general election. The Workers' Party and Gregory withdrew their support over 'The Way Forward', a Fianna Fail document which envisaged major cuts in public spending.

Fine Gael and Labour swept back into government in the following general election, with Fine Gael coming within five seats of Fianna Fail. But Haughey's problems were only beginning. His leadership would be tested yet again when revelations emerged that the phones of two leading political journalists had been tapped.

Sean Doherty, who was a controversial justice minister during the GUBU government, took the fall for the phone taps, but there was enormous pressure on Haughey and it appeared that finally his enemies in the party would be able to overthrow him. However, the tragic death of Clem Coughlan in a car accident led the crucial party meeting to be postponed. A fierce lobbying campaign by his supporters in the days following saw Haughey once again defy the odds and scrape through.

The leadership contests had taken their toll on everyone. The party organisation reacted almost hysterically to every challenge and there were stories of threats, intimidation and inducements. The pressure on everyone was enormous, with a number of Fianna Fail TDs suffering physical collapse under the strain. One story from the time speaks volumes of the atmosphere within the party. A couple of days after Martin O'Donoghue was dropped from the cabinet, he received a special delivery at his home. When he and his wife opened the parcel, they found two dead ducks inside along with a short message from Haughey.

"Shot on my estate this morning."

O'Donoghue regarded this as both a bad joke and a menacing gesture.

Longtime ally Albert Reynolds recently recounted that he went to Haughey's office after the heaves to tell him face to face that he couldn't count on his support from then on. But it was also the end of the line for many of his critics in the party, who understandably yearned for a return to normal politics.

By February 1985, with the expulsion of Des O'Malley from the organisation for refusing the vote with the party against the government's Family Planning Bill, Haughey was finally in complete control of Fianna Fail.