The Globalist

Copyright

William Collins

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This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © John Walsh 2019

Cover photograph © Getty

John Walsh asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780008352127

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008327620

Version: 2020-08-28

Dedication

For my wife Mary, my sons Hugh and Dominic,

and my parents, Tom and Maura.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

EARLY YEARS

1. Gonzaga and childhood in Monkstown

2. Student days at UCD

3. The Arms Trial

4. Fine Gael

PUBLIC OFFICE

5. The Eighth Amendment time bomb

6. The Troubles: negotiating the Anglo-Irish Agreement

7. Getting Competition: becoming a European Commissioner

8. Shaping EU competition policy

9. President of the European Commission?

10. Brokering the Uruguay Round and setting up the WTO

11. Globalisation and its discontents

CORPORATE CAREER

12. Allied Irish Bank: the DIRT scandal

13. Flying high – then crashing – with GPA

14. Goldman Sachs

15. Clipping Goodwin’s wings at RBS

16. The longest serving chairman

A SENSE OF DUTY

17. Migration: UN Special Representative

18. The biggest crisis of our time

19. A turbulent relationship with Ireland

20. Brexit: a nightmare unfolds

21. Faith and philanthropy

22. Family

23. Legacy

Picture Section

List of Illustrations

Appendices

Footnotes

Endnotes

References

Index

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

ON THE MORNING OF 11 SEPTEMBER 2016, A seventy-year-old Irishman suffered a heart attack and collapsed on a footpath in London. He had been walking to mass, as he had done every Sunday throughout his life.

A number of people rushed to his aid. He was carrying no identification. During the nine minutes it took the ambulance to arrive, those who attended to the stricken man could scarcely have realised who lay before them.

It was Peter Sutherland. ‘The father of globalisation’ and ‘God’s Banker’ are among the soubriquets he had collected during his career. He was possibly the most influential Irish person ever and a key figure in world history over the past few decades.

In many ways, he was the personification of the changing relationship between Ireland and Britain. As a European commissioner for competition he had taken on the British government and prevailed. He would later become chairman of BP, one of the UK’s largest companies.

He operated at the heart of the British establishment, yet he remained an outsider. He was a fiercely proud Irishman. And even though his influence spanned continents, he never strayed too far from his roots.

1

GONZAGA AND CHILDHOOD IN MONKSTOWN

PETER DENIS SUTHERLAND WAS BORN INTO A prosperous family in Dublin on 25 April 1946. His parents, Billy and Barbara, lived on The Hill in Monkstown, a middle-class village in south Dublin. Ireland had remained neutral during the Second World War, but memories of two painful conflicts that marked the birth of the Irish state over twenty years before were still an open sore; the country was economically underdeveloped and would remain so for another five decades. But Dublin retained characteristics of its former imperial past. There was the city’s grandeur, its private schools and private clubs. This was the Dublin into which Sutherland was born, and which would mould his formative years.

Peter had two sisters, Karen and Gill, and a younger brother, David, who predeceased him in 2006. But it was his father who was a strong and enduring influence on his life. Billy Sutherland – along with the father of Peter Mathews, the late Fine Gael TD (Teachta Dála, a member of the Dáil) – was a partner in the insurance firm Mathews, Mulcahy and Sutherland.

William Sutherland and his two sons, William Jr (Peter’s great-grandfather) and George, arrived in Ireland from Wick in Scotland around 1850. They were coopers by trade. William Jr, a Scottish Presbyterian, married Sarah Cooke, a Roman Catholic in Dublin in 1857. Five years later the couple moved to Cork, and George followed his brother to the city, where the two of them opened their own businesses. Records from 1870 show that George was a fish merchant at The Coal Quay, while William is listed as a publican at 27 Cook Street. By 1880 – when William and Sarah had eleven children – William and George are both listed as fish merchants with substantial commercial and residential property in Lavitts Quay.

Between 1880 and 1887, William moved to Newcastle in England on his own. He returned to Sarah shortly before his death, whereupon he converted to Catholicism. Sutherland’s grandfather, also called Peter, was born in 1862. He moved to Dublin and became the Treasurer of Dublin City Council, marrying Mary Fitzpatrick in 1906. Sutherland’s father, William George Anthony, was born in 1914.

Sutherland was educated at Gonzaga College, a Jesuit school in the affluent Dublin neighbourhood of Ranelagh. Even though Gonzaga had only opened its doors in 1950 – four years before Sutherland started – it had already established itself as the school of choice for Ireland’s upper middle classes. It would soon eclipse the handful of other private schools in Dublin.

A former colleague of Sutherland’s at the Law Library who attended Blackrock College described Gonzaga as ‘Dublin 4 elitist … It had a “We will educate the next leaders of the state” mentality. Blackrock might have had pretensions but the Holy Ghost fathers were basically fellas building churches in Nigeria. There would have been a lot of boarders, farmers and merchants’ sons in Blackrock – the sort of boy you wouldn’t get at Gonzaga.’

Gonzaga profoundly shaped Sutherland. Colm Barrington – the son of Tom Barrington, the first director of the Institute of Public Affairs, and nephew of Donal Barrington, the former Supreme Court judge – was a contemporary of Sutherland’s at Gonzaga. They subsequently became good friends. According to Barrington the Gonzaga boys had no idea how cloistered their existence was, ‘because we didn’t know any different. The Jesuits would make you feel that you were special rather than privileged and that Gonzaga was special and that you would go on to do special things.’ Barrington said his father was at a parent-teacher meeting at which Garret FitzGerald, the former Taoiseach, asked Fr Hughes, the rector, if the school should put more emphasis on the sciences. Fr Hughes wryly responded that at Gonzaga ‘we teach our boys to be the leaders of scientists’. Gonzaga instilled in Sutherland a lifelong passion for learning, although according to his friends and former teachers, the acquisition of knowledge was not one of his main priorities for most of his time at the school.

Tony Spollen met Sutherland on his first day at Gonzaga in 1954, and the pair remained lifelong friends, although their paths would cross in much more controversial circumstances in the 1990s. ‘We became really good pals. I used to spend six weeks in the summer in his house in Monkstown. The Sutherlands would have been very wealthy – so from an early age, he would have been used to privilege. The family had a housekeeper called Polly. His mother was an extremely nice woman, Barbara. He was always used to having the best.’

Sutherland’s typical summer would have revolved around Monkstown tennis club. He was a good, competitive tennis player. Another early childhood friend was John Arrigo, a neighbour in Monkstown. They too would remain lifelong friends. Sutherland had many passions in life, but in his early years nothing could compete with rugby. ‘Myself and Peter became very good friends as we were both very keen on rugby. We were second row together initially and we then moved to front row with John Sisk in the middle,’ says Colm Barrington. Underlining the rarefied social strata of Gonzaga, John Sisk was a member of the Sisk family, the founders of one of Ireland’s largest construction groups.

Tony Spollen says that one of his earliest jobs was to get Sutherland elected captain of the Gonzaga rugby team, which involved extensive lobbying of the other players. Sutherland once secured a trial for the Leinster schools rugby team. Impatience got the better of him and he ordered Spollen to ring the sports desk of the Irish Times newspaper to check if he had made the team. He hadn’t. ‘He was never heavily into the academics. He did his homework, but just about. His two main interests were debating, he was a terrific speaker, and rugby,’ says Spollen.

However, Gonzaga was not a good rugby school and it often had trouble putting fifteen players on the pitch. Adds Barrington: ‘From a rugby point of view we got beaten a lot. We weren’t allowed to play against any Protestant schools, who in rugby terms would have been more our size and smaller. Fr O’Connor wouldn’t allow us to play against Protestant schools because of the Archbishop McQuaid philosophy at the time.’ Fr O’Connor was the rector, while John Charles McQuaid, the Catholic archbishop of Dublin between 1940 and 1972, ensured that the church kept a vice-like grip on the state – in other words, Gonzaga were banned from playing against teams from Protestant schools. It was something of a miracle that on 5 March 2019, Gonzaga won the Leinster senior cup semi-final for the first time in the school’s history by beating Clongowes Wood College 22–19. What’s more, loose head prop Henry Godson, who scored three tries, is the son of Rory Godson, a close friend of Sutherland’s.

Sutherland developed a lifelong relationship with Gonzaga. Indeed, the school’s library is named in his honour, in recognition of one of the many generous donations he made over the years. Sutherland’s ability to maintain lifelong relationships was one of his more striking characteristics. At his funeral mass on 11 January 2018, the church was filled with former friends from school, university and all the different strands of his storied career. Garrett Sheehan, a member of Sutherland’s class who would also pursue a career in law, eventually becoming a High Court judge, gave the eulogy at Sutherland’s funeral. ‘Peter was great fun at school. He had a mischievous side but he was a natural leader. He was one of the only people to play [rugby] for the seniors and juniors in the same year. He was very good at keeping in touch with people. For example, no matter where he was or how busy he was he would always come back for UCD rugby dinner.’

Fr Noel Barber, the principal celebrant at Sutherland’s funeral mass, took up a position at Gonzaga in 1961. Although he never taught Sutherland, the two of them subsequently struck up a friendship that again would endure over the subsequent decades, and Barber was one of the last people to see Sutherland before he passed away. ‘I went to Gongaza when Peter was in fourth year. I trained a rugby team in sixth year when Peter was captain. As a young boy, he was chubby. Academically he wasn’t stellar, he was a late developer. There were some brilliant fellows in his class but he wouldn’t have been in that category in school. The most brilliant fellow in his class was Leslie Webb, who died in a drowning accident in India during VSO [Voluntary Service Overseas] straight after school. Peter was not in his category yet, but he always had a spark that showed up in debating society with Fr Veale.’

Fr Barber recounted a story from Sutherland’s time at Gonzaga. ‘A teacher overheard Peter and a pal discussing the strength and weaknesses of the priests whose masses they served. Peter with certainty said, “I like to serve Fr White.”’(Fr White was the prefect of studies.) ‘His companion retorted – it was in the days of corporal punishment – “But he biffs us.” Peter countered pragmatically, “What are you talking about? He has to do it. That is his job and he does a good job.”’

According to Barber, the same Fr White spotted something in Peter which eluded others at that stage. When a teacher remarked to him that young Sutherland was not doing so well, Fr White responded with uncharacteristic sharpness that when young Sutherland saw something he wanted he would go for it and get it. ‘I overheard that conversation and I watched with pleasure how over the years the prophecy of the shrewd Fr White was fulfilled.’

All who knew him at Gonzaga say that it was Fr Joe Veale who left an indelible mark on Sutherland. ‘Joe was absolutely inspirational. He taught us how to write. He established the debating society at Gonzaga. Peter was an outstanding debater from a young age. He made an immediate impact when he joined in fourth class,’ says Sheehan. The debating society would become another passion in Sutherland’s life and lead him to his career in law. Barrington remembers that Fr Veale was always ahead of his time in terms of openness. ‘He encouraged us to read The Catcher in the Rye when everybody else was saying it should be banned.’ Sheehan agrees that Fr Veale made a huge impression on Peter. ‘Fr Joe was absolutely passionate about the Vatican council. I wasn’t surprised to hear Peter did what he did with the Vatican because of Joe.’ In 2011 Sutherland would become an adviser to the Vatican on its financial affairs. Sutherland is estimated to have made £120 million from Goldman Sachs’ flotation in 1999. According to Sheehan, one of the first things he did with the proceeds was to buy Fr Veale an around-the-world travel ticket.

According to his former classmates, even when young Sutherland did not lack confidence and could add a self-serving gloss to events that were not necessarily merited by the facts. Sheehan recalls one particular week in sixth year when Fr Veale was handing back the boys’ weekly essays after they had been marked. Sutherland had written his essay on Ernest Hemingway, the US novelist, who had died three years previously. ‘Joe’s comment was that there was too much hairy-chested sentimentality, which was meant as a criticism. But Peter took it as a compliment and proudly sent it around the class to show what a great writer he was.’

Fr Veale died in 2002. Described by friends and former students as a highly intelligent and complex man, he shaped Sutherland during his formative years probably more than anyone else apart from his parents. An appreciation which appeared in the Irish Times shortly after Fr Veale’s death referenced an article he had written two years before, in which he addressed in very raw terms the life of a cleric. He described the ‘private pain … loneliness … isolation … the desert in the heart … self-hatred … rage … having no say in the disposition of one’s own life … the longing for human contact … the ache for tenderness and gentleness.’[1] According to the newspaper, it was an ‘outpouring of anger at the authoritarian, narrow-minded and philistine culture of the Church’s leadership, both in Ireland and worldwide, and a cry too against the smug smile from the layman’s armchair’.[2] He wanted people to ask why the scandals of clerical child-abuse had happened. What was the desolation that might explain, but not excuse, the depravity? This extraordinary article (in Doctrine and Life) appeared and disappeared with hardly a comment. His act of courage, the last act of his career, his ‘J’Accuse’, had been countered in an Irish way – by silence.

Bobby McDonagh was a former student at Gonzaga, although he entered the school eight years after Sutherland. He would become one of Ireland’s most distinguished diplomats, and as Irish ambassador to the UK had close contact with Sutherland. They often discussed Fr Veale. McDonagh wrote an appreciation following Veale’s death which appeared in the Sunday Independent newspaper on 4 November 2002:

I remember Joe once saying that he believed in Christ rather than in Christianity. In making this distinction (‘don’t make a dichotomy out of a distinction’ I still hear him saying), he was, of course, distinguishing the essence of faith from what is secondary. He promoted, with his formidable intellect and indeed the commitment of his life, the essentials of his faith. But beyond that his commitment to seeking the truth in all its paradox and complexity obliged him to have an open mind. He long recognised, for example, the central importance of women, especially mothers, in the church, as necessary leaders of opinion rather than as flower arrangers. He saw that the church urgently needs the involvement of the laity, as players rather than as cheer leaders. Tolerance of difference was at the heart of his belief.[3]

Fr Barber recalled that Sutherland hadn’t stood out as having a deeper faith than any other boy in Gonzaga at the time. ‘That became evident in later life. His last act was going to mass. His faith became evident in other ways, for example with migrants, and being involved with the Vatican.’ According to Barrington, many of the nostrums that shaped Sutherland’s life and career came from Gonzaga and the Jesuits. ‘He was a liberal. He thought that by being liberal you helped people be better off and have a better life. That would have been a Gonzaga principle. Here were the Jesuits in a very rigid church and they were much more liberal than the rest of the church and that came through in Gonzaga people.’ Friends say even though religion was very important to Sutherland throughout his life, he practised his faith privately and did not force his views on anybody else. His views were much more nuanced and progressive than he was sometimes given credit for.

In those days, boys attending Gonzaga did not have to gain the Leaving Certificate. Instead they took a matriculation exam and a sixth year, a pre-university year, on which great value was placed.[fn1] Matriculation was a separate set of exams used as a means to gain entrance to university, and was scrapped only in 1992, after eighty-two years. The idea of not taking the Leaving Certificate was to assert that what mattered was learning, not passing exams. Such an ethos was very strong when Sutherland was at the school, and it played a large part in shaping him in later life. According to Fr Barber it wasn’t just about attainment, it was about ideals and values. Although Sutherland’s matriculation was mediocre, ‘I think he realised that even though he mightn’t have worked very hard, an intellectual light was sparked. I think that really impressed him and he was always very generous to the school. He attributed what he got here to the Jesuits. They were very formative years for him, much more so than we thought at the time.’

In Barrington’s view, the most important quality Sutherland took from Gonzaga was self-confidence: ‘Gonzaga taught you to be self-confident. In my class everybody went to college. It was expected. You weren’t going to join an insurance firm or anything like that. At Gonzaga you did feel special and when you went to college you did feel prepared for this.’

2

STUDENT DAYS AT UCD

SUTHERLAND WENT TO UNIVERSITY COLLEGE Dublin in 1964 to study law. But then again, he was hardly faced with an array of choices. Trinity College Dublin, academically superior at the time and with more of an international reputation, was out of bounds for young ambitious Catholics. Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, who had prevented Sutherland from playing rugby against Protestants, had also made an order that young Catholics were barred from entering Trinity, which had a Protestant ethos.

By that stage, Sutherland knew he wanted to become a lawyer, and that left him with one choice. In the 1960s, UCD was located in Earlsfort Terrace, now the site of the National Concert Hall, just off Stephen’s Green in the centre of Dublin. At Gonzaga, Sutherland had been able to seamlessly mix his two passions, debating and rugby; but at university, some tough choices had to be made.

The Literary & Historical Society (L&H) had been founded in 1854 by Cardinal John Henry Newman. To become auditor of the L&H was seen as a rite of passage for any young person who had intentions of shaping Irish society, or at the very least becoming rich and famous. Patrick (Paddy) Cosgrave was auditor of the L&H when Sutherland arrived on the campus in 1964. Cosgrave was something of an anomaly. UCD, along with wider Irish society, was becoming more comfortable with its nationalist past. Like their counterparts throughout Europe, Irish students were on the march leftwards.

Cosgrave was very much to the right and revelled in the label ‘west Brit’, a pejorative term used to describe anybody still well disposed to Ireland’s former colonial masters. He used to boast that his grandfather, a warden in Kilmainham Jail, had beaten up a young Kevin Barry, a Republican martyr. Following UCD, Cosgrave moved to London, where he plied his trade as a journalist before catching the eye of Margaret Thatcher. He went on to become a special adviser to the former British prime minister, although she cut ties with him when his drinking got out of control. He died in 2001 aged sixty.

Sutherland had shown no overt political leanings at that stage. Friends say he had no appearance of struggling for too long, if at all, with the choice of spending Saturday nights in the company of Cosgrave et al. in the L&H or the ‘hop’ at the Lansdowne rugby club. Neither was he active in politics at UCD, where many prominent members of Fine Gael – such as John Bruton, who was a few years behind Sutherland at college – were taking their first tentative steps towards elected office.

In those days, students took their degrees and Bar exams at the same time. Sutherland was awarded a law degree in 1967 and passed his Bar exams a year later.