The Arms Crisis of 1970 – The Plot That Never Was: Readable but lacking context

Fifty years ago Ireland was transfixed by the Arms Trial. In popular memory the crisis is largely recalled as one in which taoiseach Jack Lynch took decisive action to save Irish democracy, dismissing ministers Charles Haughey and Neil Blaney for conspiring to illegally import arms for use by northern republicans.

A new study by Michael Heney asserts that Lynch and his allies, through a combination of “false testimony, silence, evasion and various forms of subterfuge”, scapegoated Haughey and Blaney and destroyed the career of Army officer Capt James Kelly.

Rather than being dangerous mavericks, the ministers concerned had simply carried out government policy. Indeed Heney convincingly argues that there was consensus at cabinet level on the need to supply weapons in order avoid a repeat of August 1969, when nationalists had been largely undefended in the face of loyalist attacks.

There is no doubt that neither lionising Lynch or demonising Haughey and Blaney is adequate in terms of understanding what occurred. Heney engages with a comprehensive range of literature (though omitting significant work by Patrick Mulroe and Tony Craig) and provides an exhaustive trawl of archival material.

The batoning of marchers in Derry occurred just as the south was preoccupied with an attempt by Jack Lynch's government to replace proportional representation

His argument is usually nuanced, though as is often the case, some interpretations of particular documents will be open to argument. For example, ministers who took opposing views on the crisis, such as Kevin Boland and Padraig Faulkner, nevertheless agreed that armed force was never considered as a serious option by the cabinet. Desmond O’Malley has contended that “some of what happened in 1969 and 1970 was never put down on paper”. Presumably this applies even more to what might have been discussed by non-State actors.

Lack of context

While tremendously detailed, the book’s major weakness is a lack of contextualisation of how northern civil rights protest impacted on the Republic post-October 1968. The batoning of marchers in Derry occurred just as the south was preoccupied with an attempt by Lynch’s government to replace proportional representation.

Campaigners against that proposal noted that the introduction of such a system in the North was one of the demands of northern protesters, warning that “if P.R. is abolished . . . the cities of our Republic will be carved up in the same manner as the notorious ward system of Derry”.

Fianna Fáil were compared to the Ulster Unionist party, both run by “rough and ruthless men . . . determined to maintain themselves in office for as long as possible”. The government was humiliated in the referendum.

As refugees fled south, thousands took to the streets, and a broad range of figures, from trade unionists to local councillors, demanded armed intervention

After Derry, the party’s nationalist credentials were also called into question, Labour party leader Brendan Corish, alleging that the failure to defend northern nationalists, revealed the “fiction of the Fianna Fail claim that they in some way represent the Republican tradition”. It is surely no coincidence that the first of what Heney describes as Blaney’s “uncompromising speeches” on partition came in the winter of 1968.

Heney describes the Donegal man as a “hardline republican”. But while Blaney was given to invoking the memory of the Civil War “77” during election campaigns, as minister, in line with government policy, he had been part of a cabinet that interned IRA men and had held cordial meetings with his unionist counterparts throughout the 1960s.

‘Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites’

Haughey’s background was different; as the son of a Free State Army officer he lacked the Anti-Treatyite heritage once necessary for advancement in Fianna Fáil. What both men shared was a commitment to engagement with business interests (the key fundraising group in this respect, TACA, is mentioned only once by Heney) and an abrasive, intolerant attitude to critics.

By 1968 campaigners were increasingly linking Dublin’s housing crisis with Fianna Fáil’s ties to developers; when activist cleric Fr Austin Flannery raised these issues, he was dismissed as a “gullible priest” by Haughey.

As the government sought new powers to deal with protest, opposition politicians pointed out the similarity with unionist responses to the civil rights movement. Labour’s Noel Browne compared a new Criminal Justice Bill to Northern Ireland’s Specials Powers Act, while the same proposal was described as an “encouragement to the Unionist Party in its continuing denial of civil rights in the Six Counties”.

Unlikely as it seems in retrospect there was method in the madness of the “Red Scare” during the June 1969 general election, in which Blaney and Haughey featured prominently, denouncing “Marxists, Maoists, Trotskyites and the like who have emerged . . . like carrion birds to pick the flesh of the Irish people”.

Hence too the contemporary report authored by senior civil servant Peter Berry and presented to cabinet, which recommended political divisions within the republican movement be exploited so that a split would result and the “communist element would become discredited”.

Just before the Battle of the Bogside, Lynch told leading media figures that a clampdown on the IRA south of the Border was imminent and asked for their aid in preparing the public for this. But the wave of sympathy with northern nationalists after August made such legislation impossible. As refugees fled south, thousands took to the streets, and a broad range of figures, from trade unionists to local councillors, demanded armed intervention. Even Fine Gael’s Liam Cosgrave suggested that the only solution to the violence was a united Ireland.

That popular upsurge is referenced only obliquely in the book. Yet it formed a crucial context for the events which led to the Arms Trial.

Demands from below

The following August the IRA did split (though not in the way Berry had envisaged) and part of the government’s strategy involved dealing with an organisation they had been intent on suppressing a few months before. Ultimately finance was supplied both to the existing IRA structure and to representatives of what was becoming the Provisionals.

One of the main conduits was Capt Kelly, who seems simply to have carried out his duty as he saw it. (Heney suggests that Haughey could have saved Kelly’s reputation but chose not to.)

Throughout 1969 then, government responses to events were in part driven by demands, or perceived threats, from below. But by the spring of 1970, fear of destabilisation was replacing instinctive solidarity. This was illustrated graphically by reactions to the killing of Garda Richard Fallon during a robbery by a republican splinter group in April that year. Fallon’s death undoubtedly influenced the hard line taken by Special Branch over the attempted importation of weapons later that month.

At government level, idealism coincided with self-interest and genuine sympathy for nationalists merged with a keen awareness of potential political advancement. The Arms Crisis exposed power struggles within Fianna Fáil as well as its desire not to lose the leadership within nationalism.

Ultimately, however, Fianna Fáil was a 26-county party; the view expressed by the Irish Press during the trial that “this State doesn’t need northerners either coming or being brought to take sides in its internal affairs” reflected a shift towards prioritising domestic stability above all else.

Michael Heney’s book is a readable and at times forensic account of the minutiae of arguments and counter-arguments around the Arms Crisis. But those seeking an understanding of why the North provoked such upheaval in southern politics will have to look elsewhere.

Brian Hanley is the author of The Impact of the Troubles on the Republic of Ireland, 1968-79: Boiling Volcano? (Manchester University Press).