Surely the most depressing revelation to emerge from the official files of 30 years ago was the decision by the Coalition Government not to protest to the government of Libya over its arms shipments to the IRA, writes Kevin Myers.
The decision was based on a truly contemptible combination: an appetite for appeasement precisely coinciding with one for commerce. It was one of the most catastrophically counter-productive examples of foreign policy-making in the history of the Irish State.
"A protest might spur Col Gadafy to provide further supplies; the IDA feel that they may succeed in interesting Libyans in investment here; Irish organisations are interested in contracts with the Libyan authorities," said a Department of Foreign Affairs note. Libyan action, it continued, was probably due to "misunderstanding by Colonel Gadafy of the position in Ireland". Well, if that despicable, murderous clown didn't understand the "position in Ireland", was it not the job of the Irish Government to tell him in the strongest possible terms what it actually was? That there was one Government, one Army, one law, one President, one set of courts, and it was that Government and those institutions that the Libyan government had to do business with, and none other. This is not reckless nor impolitic conduct: it is normal for any government anywhere to insist unconditionally that foreign governments do not traffic with terrorist movements within its territory.
This the Coalition Government did not do; instead it abjectly mumbled some cynical nonsense about investment from Libya, adding - in what must be a landmark in the abysmal history of appeasement of tyrants - that poor Colonel Gadafy doesn't understand, so we won't say anything to enable him to understand, lest it offend him.
Well this was a mightily successful policy and no mistake: for unoffended, this brute continued to supply the IRA with weaponry well into the 1980s, massively prolonging the Troubles, and costing many hundreds more lives. Until finally, finally, the IRA realised that no matter how many people it butchered, it couldn't bring about a united Ireland by violence. Meanwhile, its Libyan friend, the Hugh Hefner of Arab despots, stayed surrounded by the busty damozels of his all-women bodyguard, as shipment after shipment of Semtex and Kalashnikovs bobbed over the briny to cause more war in a land whose government had so desperately wished not to offend him.
What is even more depressing is that Irish nationalism did not even begin to understand the scale of the poison of Irish republicanism; or more likely it did, but lacked the courage or political will to face it. Certainly, if the Coalition Government of 1973 was more concerned about illusory investments from Libya than about confronting that country over its support for terrorist movements, then it must have lost all touch with moral reality.
Yet this was the so-called tough, anti-republican Government: what might we have expected from Fianna Fáil? We were to find out in six years later, after the Warrenpoint and Mullaghmore atrocities, when Jack Lynch acceded to British requests for surveillance over-flights in Border areas. The result? He was promptly overthrown by Charles Haughey, with the long chain of consequence from IRA bombs on an August day in 1979 leading directly to our many tribunals today.
The truth is that both Coalition and Fianna Fáil governments reflected a widespread popular desire not to get too confrontational with the IRA. Liberal-left Ireland, largely represented by this newspaper and the legal profession, was more concerned with the civil rights of terrorists and murderers than with the right to life of terrorist victims. And for much of nationalist Ireland, including large swathes of Fianna Fáil and the GAA, either consciously or unconsciously, the IRA's fight was their fight. Who vigorously defended the concept that a state's first duty was to guard order and protect the sanctity of human life? Almost no one.
Thus the Minister for Defence, Paddy Donegan, was popularly regarded as being "right-wing". Yet what genuine right-winger would have let the foreign crew of the arms-smuggling vessel Claudia off with a warning, famously depicted in his own words as "a kick up the transom"? This is not right-wing as Texas knows it, or indeed any state which is serious about protecting its integrity, for the arms smugglers should have been licking prison walls for a decade or more. No, this is "right-wing" only in a land where governance, political vocabulary and all ethical perspectives have been thoroughly contaminated by a rampant culture of violence or appeasement of violence.
After the Claudia affair, with the IRA leader Joe Cahill being jailed for only three years, the IRA was sure it had nothing to fear from any Irish Government. And it was right. Two years later, the IRA murdered the British ambassador, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, and his secretary, Judith Cook - an intolerable assault on the rules of civilised diplomacy, which should have spelt ruin for the IRA. The reverse was true.
One IRA suspect was known to the Garda, which had suspected an attack on the ambassador was likely, but had nonetheless failed to prevent it. In a truly shameful betrayal of his obligations to the law and this State, Garda Patrick Kirby tipped off the IRA that this man was wanted. Garda Kirby's complicity with the IRA was soon uncovered, and he was charged under the Official Secrets Act. At Kilmainham District Court, he pled guilty to supplying numerous confidential documents to the IRA. And what punishment did the court impose on the charge to which this traitor had already pled guilty? It dismissed the charge.