Lynch partly responsible for the 1970 arms crisis

Des O'Malley's claim at Jack Lynch's graveside on Saturday that 30 years ago "we could have caved in to sinister elements and put our country at mortal risk" was hogwash. Jack Lynch was a fine, decent man. He deserves great credit for the stability he engendered at a time of great volatility when the Northern crisis broke. But he himself contributed hugely to the 1970 arms crisis and, along with George Colley, caused the destabilisation of his own government in 1979.

The arms crisis of 1970 was caused primarily by the chaotic management of government affairs in 1969 and early 1970. Jack Lynch had failed to establish his primacy over his government on his election as Taoiseach in 1966. He himself rationalised this by pointing to the fact that the government he inherited was the government created by Sean Lemass. Lemass had made the transition from the old revolutionary generation in 1965.

Lemass had also bequeathed to him another liability. Quite deliberately, in the mid-1960s, Lemass had encouraged ministers to act on their own initiative. He had coined the phrase "development corporations" as a title for Departments of State and he expected ministers to be the leaders of their corporations. That engendered a sense of independence on the part of ministers, outside the conventional parameters of collective cabinet responsibility, and made Jack Lynch's role as Taoiseach all the more difficult.

Lemass because of his dynamism, stature and revolutionary background had an easy authority over his flamboyant team of ministers, and Jack Lynch lacked that. (Incidentally, this analysis of Jack Lynch's difficulties as Taoiseach from 1966 to 1969 is that of Jack Lynch himself: he wrote about it for the November 1979 issue of Magill.)

Lynch had an opportunity, after his fabulous election victory in 1969, to put his own stamp on the new cabinet, but he balked at it when Neil Blaney defied him. His closest ministerial colleague at the time probably was Charles Haughey, his minister for finance. They got on well during that time, as evidenced by Lynch's appointment of Haughey as director of elections in 1969 and Haughey's calculated exploitation of Lynch's huge personal popularity during the course of that campaign.

QUITE recently, Michael O'Kennedy told me of an incident during that campaign when Haughey fainted at a rally in Limerick. Jack Lynch, who was in Nenagh that night, was hugely concerned and was obviously delighted to see him in Nenagh the following morning.

Haughey had been in a very serious car crash in 1968, after which he nearly died (the impact of this upon him was profound: Kevin Boland has always maintained that he lost his nerve and decisiveness then and never recovered). Jack Lynch was supportive then as well.

There had been a tension between Jack Lynch and George Colley from the time of the leadership election of 1966, when Colley insisted on standing against Lynch. Although that contest was a mannerly one, it left its mark.

Jack Lynch was content to allow Haughey more or less run the government from 1969 to 1970, and that was at the heart of the problems that led to the arms crisis of 1970. At a time when public opinion would have supported the giving of arms to Northern nationalists to defend themselves (September 1969), Haughey promised money for arms. At the time of the promise, it was by no means clear that it was in conflict with government policy. Unfortunately for Haughey, the procurement of arms dragged on for over six months, by which time public opinion had changed.

There is evidence that his own opinion had changed as well, but he didn't have the gumption to call a halt to it. Jack Lynch could himself have done so early on. He was fully briefed on the plan to import arms by Peter Berry, the then secretary of the Department of Justice, in October 1969, but he did nothing.

Even when the whole issue came to the fore in April 1970, Jack Lynch agreed not to fire either Haughey or Blaney and changed his mind only when Liam Cosgrave threatened to go public about the whole affair.

Jack Lynch does not emerge with credit from that 1970 arms crisis. But from then until he went out of office in early 1973 he did the State some service. Almost overnight on May 4th, 1970, he assumed command of his government and of the crisis. He skilfully saw off the challenge to his position mounted by Neil Blaney and Kevin Boland (he was lucky perhaps that Haughey was in hospital at the time). When the acquittals came in the arms trial in late October 1970, he was sufficiently in command of his party to brush off any further challenge.

HE STEERED a steady course on Northern Ireland policy throughout all of this, insisting that the objective of Irish unity could come about only with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland. He was securely at the helm during what was perhaps the most dangerous period, February 1972, in the immediate aftermath of Bloody Sunday.

His electoral achievements are not properly reflected in the statistics - won two, lost one - because it was the election he lost (February 1973) that was perhaps his most remarkable achievement. The Fianna Fail vote actually increased in 1973 from its 1969 tally (46.2 per cent, as compared with 45.7 per cent) and it was only the fortuitously sweet transfers between Fine Gael and Labour that denied him office. It was a momentous performance given all that had happened during the previous four years.

He would have preferred to retire in happier circumstances than those of December 1979. A series of massive blunders, mainly the responsibility of George Colley (farmers tax, tax reform generally, the handling of Bill Loughnane's challenge, the postal and telephone strike), unnerved the serried ranks of Fianna Fail backbenchers (serried because of Jack Lynch's huge victory in the 1977 election). These, with the collapse of the Fianna Fail vote in the European and local elections of June 1979, convinced many Fianna Fail TDs that Jack Lynch's replacement had to be someone from outside the then party establishment.

Charles Haughey's part in the unsettling of Jack Lynch in 1979 was negligible. The suggestion that a speech he gave to Cairde Fail on Padraig Pearse in November 1979 was a calculated assault on Lynch's position is absurd, as the speech was entirely banal. Jack Lynch himself acknowledged at the time that he could have delivered the speech himself.

The most salient memory of Jack Lynch is of his niceness. He was a lovely man and the Irish people recognised this by supporting him electorally as they supported no other Irish leader before or since.

Vincent Browne can be contacted at vbrowne@irish-times.ie