Issues Behind The Arms Trial

Sir, - Mary Holland's column on the events of 1969-1970 ("Gun-running plot is not the key issue", Opinion, May 3rd) concludes…

Sir, - Mary Holland's column on the events of 1969-1970 ("Gun-running plot is not the key issue", Opinion, May 3rd) concludes that "the nagging question is not whether there was an official plot to import arms. . .but why there was no government strategy to push the British further and faster along the road to equal rights."

At the risk of being rapped over the knuckles by more learned colleagues, I would suggest that at one level the answer is quite simple. Successive Dublin governments were obsessed by the question of ending partition. Improving the lot of Northern Catholics and reconciling the two communities in Northern Ireland was at best a secondary concern. It was only with the abandonment of the anti-partitionist strategy that Dublin became a major player in the fate of Northern Ireland. In that respect the arms crisis was a crucial moment of transition away from the historic politics of 1916-1923. As your Editorial on the same day put it: "There can be no doubt that Lynch, and those loyal to him, pulled the State back from a course which could have led to a breakdown of democracy, to anarchy and war." - Yours, etc.,

Dr Geoffrey Roberts, Department of History, University College Cork.