current holdings of the minutes of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party span from 1926 to 1981,13 while its holdings of the minutes of the Fianna Fáil national executive span from 1926 to February 1979.14 Consequently, an examination of newspaper coverage (primarily by the Irish Times) of meetings of Fianna Fáil’s parliamentary party and national executive during the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, has been implemented in an effort to overcome this anomaly.15
Lastly, interviews with influential figures directly related to this book were of great benefit, helping to underpin some central arguments offered by this research. Although the Haughey family refused to be interviewed, I was able to interview the late Harry Boland and Mary Colley (wife of the late George Colley). I was also fortunate to interview retired Fianna Fáil government ministers, including Dermot Ahern, the late Pádraig Faulkner and Dr Rory O’Hanlon. Additionally, I interviewed and corresponded with past Taoisigh, notably the late Garret FitzGerald. The inside information provided by retired British and Irish civil servants and political advisors also proved a worthwhile resource, particularly the views of Lord Robert Armstrong, Noel Dorr, David Neligan and Martin Mansergh.
Foreword
There was not a single official in the entire Irish civil service with responsibility for monitoring what was happening in Northern Ireland, from the inauguration of the Irish Free State in 1922 to when the conflict broke in the latter part of 1968 and escalated in August 1969. There was a calculated, disguised indifference to the seething anger of a large part of the nationalist community with the relentless discrimination against Catholics in Northern Ireland, particularly the discrimination of housing allocations, the gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, repeated instances of arbitrary violence on nationalists, a hopelessly biased police force, a belligerently sectarian auxiliary force, the B Specials and the oppressive belittlement of the nationalist population.
Instead there was just the repetitious atonement of the ‘evils’ of partition, the ‘right’ of the Irish people to self-determination, and the injustice of British intransigence in refusing to force a million and a half Protestants into a united Ireland against their wishes. This in the certain knowledge, and almost certainly with the earnest wish, that these repetitious atonements would never result in a united Ireland but rated well with a deluded electorate.
And when the great ‘thaw’ in relations between Northern Ireland and the Republic occurred on 14 January 1965 with the meeting between Seán Lemass, taoiseach, and Terence O’Neill, prime minister for Northern Ireland, the indifference to the condition of nationalists in the Orange State was perpetuated. Lemass was dismissive of repeated protests by Northern representatives about the conditions for nationalists in the North.
When Radharc, a television documentary team of Catholic priests, did an exposé of discrimination and gerrymandering in Derry, featuring Eddie McAteer, leader of the (very) moderate Nationalist Party in Northern Ireland, Paddy Friel, father of Brian Friel, and James Doherty, a businessman and member of the Knights of St Columbanus, pressure was put on RTÉ by the Lemass government not to broadcast the programme as it would interfere with the high politics of the Lemass overture to Terence O’Neill. RTÉ complied and never, until the conflict broke, did it engage in an exposé of conditions for nationalists in the Orange State – ditto The Irish Times, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Press.
There is no evidence that at any of the meetings between Terence O’Neill and the two taoisigh whom he met, Seán Lemass and Jack Lynch, that the issue of discrimination, gerrymandering and the general hostile environment nurtured by the Orange State against nationalists was ever mentioned. The last meeting took place in Dublin on 8 January 1968, which, apparently, was a convivial encounter. Jack Lynch spoke of Aer Lingus possibly inaugurating a flight between Belfast and New York, there was talk of co-operation on tourism, on vigilance to avoid foot-and-mouth disease contaminating any part of Ireland, and on the exchange of museum and art gallery exhibitions.
The mindset of the southern state allowed for no understanding of the brewing anger and militancy of a significant part of the nationalist population, whose ambition was not to join with what they regarded as a failed southern republic, but to overthrow the Orange State. Northern nationalists felt abandoned and were abandoned. And that calculated indifference and wilful ignorance on the part of the southern state contributed significantly to the horrors that unfolded.
When the conflict broke on the streets of Derry some eight months later, on 5 October 1968, when a civil rights march was brutally beaten from the streets by RUC officers, the Dublin government reverted to type – it was partition that was to blame. And that blind spot informed the reaction of the Fianna Fáil government when the Northern conflict exploded on 12 August 1969.
Patrick Hillery, minister for external affairs (foreign minister), on the urgings of Jack Lynch, taoiseach, did go to London the previous week to warn Michael Stewart, British foreign secretary, of an impending calamity if the Apprentice Boys parade planned for Derry was not banned on 12 August. But on the Friday before that predicted conflagration, Lynch and Hillery went on holiday: Jack Lynch to a retreat (possibly literally) in west Cork, where he was largely uncontactable, and Patrick Hillery to a painting course in Galway, where he advised his landlady he was not to be interrupted. In spite of their own prognostications, they were both startled by the events when their predicted outcome ensued. Lynch was ferried back to Dublin the following day. Hillery could not be contacted until a day later.
A headless-chicken response to the Northern eruption followed. Irish troops were moved towards the border, supposedly to construct field hospitals for the accommodation of refugees, but conveying to Northern unionists that an invasion by the Irish army was about to occur; that impression was underlined when Jack Lynch said in a television address that the southern state could not ‘stand by’ while nationalists were being murdered and besieged; that only a united Ireland could resolve the festered sore of the Northern state. All this so soon after the cosy ‘high politics’ of the Lemass–O’Neill and Lynch–O’Neill meetings.
The cabinet meeting on 13 August 1969 showed fissures within Fianna Fáil on Northern policy. Neil Blaney, Charles Haughey, Kevin Boland and Jim Gibbons were contemptuous of an early draft of Lynch’s television address and they, effectively, dictated the address that was later delivered. I suspect Haughey’s belligerency then was informed not by any commitment to the ideal of a united Ireland or by apprehension that Neil Blaney might emerge the strong man to succeed a weak and dithering Jack Lynch as leader of Fianna Fáil and taoiseach, but by an irritation with the limp leadership of Jack Lynch – Haughey had been, by far, the dominant presence in government while minister for finance from 1966 until his dismissal in May 1970.
Under the influence of Ken Whitaker, Lynch began to formulate a coherent policy on Northern Ireland – Whitaker and Lynch had become close while Lynch was briefly minister for finance for 1965 to 1966 and they remained close thereafter, even when Whitaker moved out of the civil service to become governor of the Central Bank in early 1969.
But never during all the months of turmoil from August 1969 onwards, until the dismissal of the ministers in May 1970, did Lynch make any attempt to cohere Northern policy at cabinet level. He was repeatedly challenged by Neil Blaney on the core of his (Lynch’s) policy of ‘unity by consent’ and he never directly confronted Blaney or sought to fire him until May 1970. The cabinet and Northern policy was a shambles and that is a crucial background to the Arms Crisis, as was a failure to understand that what was at stake in the North was a revolt against the Northern state with which Lemass and Lynch courted friendly relations.
Throughout the period of the early conflict Haughey never spoke publicly on the Northern Ireland issue, which weakens the theory that his motivation for his involvement in the attempted arms importation was to outdo Blaney on the republican flank – why would anybody support Haughey because of his belligerency on Northern Ireland if they didn’t know about it?
But he did meet representatives from the nationalist community in Northern Ireland and he did hear, from them and from the Irish army intelligence officer, Captain Jim Kelly, of the insistent demand for arms from nationalist leaders,