The Irish government and the Troubles – are they inextricably linked?
Posted By: June 18, 2016
By Steven McCaffery. The Detail. February 3, 2014
UNIONISTS allege that the Irish government helped create the Provisional IRA, and then failed to do enough to combat republican violence during the Troubles. The Detail’s Steven McCaffery examines Dublin’s role in the conflict through the eyes of people who watched history unfold. But the outcome raises uncomfortable questions for all sides.
THERE are four groups of people: Irish military families from Dublin, border Protestants targeted by the IRA, the victims of loyalist bombs planted in the Irish Republic, and Belfast republicans who helped form the Provos.
They have never met and they have little in common.
But their individual stories lead back to the murderous years of the early Troubles and raise questions around the role of successive Irish governments.
At a time when Dublin’s handling of the conflict is being highlighted by politicians in Northern Ireland, The Detail uses six short films and archive audio to report on a series of major controversies:
THE DUBLIN ARMS TRIAL OF 1970
BORDER SECURITY AND EXTRADITION
POLITICAL REACTION
The list of controversies being raised against the Irish government featured in the Haass talks and are now formally on the political agenda.
It is clear that after four decades of violence and close to 4,000 deaths, the truth of how and why the Troubles started remains hugely controversial.
The spiralling events of 1969 still have a pull on the politics of today.
WHEN HATE AND HISTORY RYHMED
In 1969, no one expected the calamitous events that were to come.
Northern Ireland saw sporadic violence in the decades after it was established in 1921.
But when the ’60s swung into view, the Civil Rights movement had captured the imagination of the minority Catholic community that was angry at ongoing discrimination.
Unionism felt its world was being destabilised and feared opening the door to reform.
In 1966 loyalists killed three people. Violence escalated in ’69 and events moved rapidly.
Civil rights demonstrations were attacked.
Nationalists saw police acting as an arm of Unionism.
As violence peaked, nearly 2,000 people were forced from their homes. More than 1,500 were Catholic.
By the end of the year 19 people were dead and British troops were on the streets.
A frightening new phase of history was taking grip.
GUNS FROM GOVERNMENT?
The IRA was largely dormant and had little access to weapons, but republicans featured prominently in `Defence Committees’ hastily set up in nationalist districts.
Among them was an IRA prisoner from the 1950s, John Kelly, who joined delegations that travelled from Belfast to hold talks with politicians in Dublin as the crisis mounted.
“They were falling over themselves to meet us,” he said.
Some of the delegates demanded weapons and they would later claim that this became allied to an Irish government contingency plan that was being prepared in case sectarian violence escalated in Northern Ireland.
John Kelly said: “In a doomsday situation, the Irish army planned to enter either Derry or Newry, and hold until such times as a third force arrived, an international force such as the United Nations.
“Their problem was the difficulties that could arise for nationalists in Belfast and other areas – they could be overrun – and how could they be defended?
“We would need guns.”
He met Irish Army intelligence officer Captain James Kelly who said he was tasked to seek guns under the `doomsday’ plan, and they embarked on a string of ill-fated trips to London, the US and Europe in search of weapons.
British intelligence was aware of at least some of these efforts from an early stage.
MIXED MESSAGES?
In April 1970 a failed bid to get a shipment of pistols and machine guns to Dublin airport marked the last throw of the dice.
Taoiseach Jack Lynch was approached by senior figures inside and outside the government who were deeply concerned.
Some sources would later claim he already knew about the arms plot. Others claimed that if he didn’t, he should have.
But the government always denied knowledge, blaming it on a maverick element.
In a sensational development, Mr Lynch sacked two of his ministers, Neil Blaney and Charles Haughey.
In a further explosive move the pair were charged with conspiracy to illegally import arms, as were Captain Kelly, the IRA member John Kelly, and a businessman caught up in the episode, Albert Luykx.
Blaney was discharged at an early stage, but the other men were put on trial.
Captain Kelly claimed he was acting under orders and had been reporting to Defence Minister Jim Gibbons.
The government denied authorising the arms plot – but when Director of Army Intelligence Colonel Michael Hefferon took the stand, he confirmed Capt Kelly’s account and testified that there was a chain of command that led back to the Irish cabinet.
In a major blow to the authorities, the jury acquitted the accused men, though the government continued to deny the plot had been sanctioned.
LEGACY ISSUES
Jack Lynch faced an unprecedented crisis during his time in office and his administration struggled to maintain a steady course through a period that, in retrospect, may have been impossible to navigate without controversy.
He is renowned as the leader who prevented the Republic from being drawn into violence.
And the account of his public break with the ‘Hawks’ in 1970 took on more totemic political significance as IRA violence ramped-up and the horrific events of the Troubles unfolded.
But some unionists and republicans north of the Border, where violence continued to spiral after 1970, have a more jaundiced view.
As the crisis erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969, Mr Lynch told TV viewers his government could no longer “stand by”.
Roy Garland, a hardline unionist at the time, said many feared a Dublin “plot with the IRA”.
“Some people have whitewashed Jack Lynch and said he was trying to keep hardliners [in his cabinet] happy, but some of the things he said were incredible. He helped to escalate the whole thing.”
A string of other events – the training of northern nationalists by the Irish Army in Co Donegal, Irish government cash financing republicans ‘manning the barricades’, discussions with northern republicans in Bailieborough Co Cavan, and the infamous Arms Crisis – fuelled the unionist analysis that Dublin was midwife to the Provisional IRA.
But if Unionists blame Dublin’s `actions’, John Kelly, who helped form the Provos in 1969/70, claimed it was the Irish government’s ultimate failure to support northern nationalists against unionist violence that was the catalyst.
He said of Dublin’s `in-action’: “What I’m saying is, that they created the conditions on the ground for the formation of the Provisional IRA by their abandonment of northern nationalism.
“There was no IRA existing in 1969.
“What happened on the ground was that northern nationalism, withdrawing in on itself to defend itself, was the breeding ground for, if you like, the paramilitary approach.
“That is what gave the water, in which the IRA could swim.”
PAGES FROM HISTORY
The Arms Trial controversy was overtaken by events in the Troubles.
But it resurfaced in 2001 when a document emerged showing Col Hefferon’s statement to Gardaí had been altered, removing multiple references to Defence Minister Gibbons, before it was entered in the book of evidence for the trial.
A government review found no proof of an effort to influence the trial and it has been claimed the changes were to remove hearsay evidence.
This explanation for almost 20 alterations and deletions was rejected by the families of Captain Kelly and Col Hefferon.
But the controversy is revived by the dramatic recollection of a defence solicitor from the trial interviewed by The Detail.
Frank Fitzpatrick recounted how Colonel Hefferon confided that he had decided not to “commit perjury”.
The solicitor said: “At the first trial, I think on the first morning of the court, someone came to me and said Colonel Hefferon – Captain Kelly’s commander – wants to meet his solicitor.
“I met him in the main hall of the court, a tall dignified person, who said to me that, ‘I spent two hours in the church this morning and I am not going to commit perjury. I have to tell you that your client is telling the truth’.”
Events moved on after the trial, and decades passed before Mr Fitzpatrick was able to recount the episode to the Hefferon family, by which time their father had died.
The colonel’s son Colm has now called for an independent trawl of all the files relating to the Arms Trial that are in government records.
But in a sign of the mystery that still surrounds the case, he added: “My father was in his role for eight years. We requested any papers that might pertain to him. I have been told that they don’t exist. The man is invisible.”
THE CAPTAIN AND HIS WIFE
The Arms Crisis, as it became known, eventually ended for the politicians who were placed in the spotlight.
Jack Lynch won the internal battle in his party that followed the events.
And while Charles Haughey became a political outcast, he climbed back to the top and became Taoiseach.
But the Irish Army officers caught up in the affair were unable to draw a line under the past.
Colonel Hefferon was regarded as a first class officer according to official records and while he faced no charges at the Arms Trial, he was ostracised after giving evidence that did not tally with the official position
Captain James Kelly, the intelligence officer who had gone in search of guns following orders to plan for a ‘doomsday’ situation, went on to campaign for full disclosure around the Arms Trial until his death in 2003.
His widow Sheila said that in the climate of public controversy that emerged around the trial her family suffered intimidation.
“My husband was found not guilty in the Arms Trial, but that did not stop a campaign to blacken his name,” she said.“The harassment continued for years.”
In 2007 the mother of six made a further public plea of government and asked that her husband be posthumously promoted as a gesture by the army for his ruined career; that documents gathered in his defence be entered in the Dáil record; and that his innocence be declared.
But even four decades after the Arms Crisis, she said she encountered political opposition.
Sheila Kelly died in 2009.
See below Part Two of this article: Border Lands.
“There was a stretch of land along the Fermanagh side of the border which was a no-man’s land” /
By Steven McCaffery
JOHN McClure’s farm on the Fermanagh border overlooks a narrow stretch of water.
It is little more than a stream, but on the map it is the thin line that separates Northern Ireland from the Republic.
When the Troubles broke out, the problem for the McClure family was that the river was too easy to cross.
In March 1972 their lives, and the lives of a number of other Protestant families living outside the border village of Garrison, were changed forever.
When the IRA came for his neighbour, they said they only wanted his guns.
Then they told the man’s wife they were taking him hostage.
She found him later among the fields, riddled with 14 bullets, and she watched as the men who had made her a widow strolled off across the border.
John, like his neighbour, was in the UDR (Ulster Defence Regiment) and he was advised to leave – and leave quickly.
“It all happened in a week, but when the decision was made, we packed and left in one day,” he said.
They never returned to the farm. That life was over.
“My wife was crying. The children were crying. It was a very traumatic experience.”
In the late 1990s, as the peace process blossomed, he was among a number of Protestant farmers who lobbied to return to their abandoned homes.
Campaigners today estimate that at least 30 families were forced from their farms on the Fermanagh border alone.
Some might have been able to return, but the McClures never did.
More than 40 years after they were forced to leave, they revisited their old home with The Detail.
The cottage is suffocated by weeds and vines, but it still holds echoes of the day the family fled.
The McClures had taken what they could, and abandoned the rest.
In what was once the sitting-room, two old armchairs rot in the shadows.
Elsewhere, a skirt hangs on a hook, a child’s shoe lies forgotten in a corner, an old radio sits in silence on a disused table.
On the way out the door, a wooden chair has been tossed on its side.
John said that his membership of the security forces followed a family tradition of army service – but it offered little protection.
He said border security was virtually non-existent and the IRA “operated freely”.
Catholic neighbours were supportive but, in the end, the family had no option but to go.
VICTIMS AND SURVIVORS
KENNY Donaldson of the victims group the South East Fermanagh Foundation (SEFF) said families forced from their land in border areas should be recognised and supported.
“The IRA may not have taken their life, but they did succeed in taking their way of life,” he said.
“I think the Republic of Ireland government has something it could do around that whole area – if there are folks and families that could be resettled back or indeed if there are upgrades or work that could be done to farms, whether housing or the land, to put it in a position where people could return, then I think that would be a nice legacy.”
Mr Donaldson said the Irish government also had to account for Border security down through the decades.
“Security and extradition policies were never really developed to actually, firstly intervene to prevent the problem, but certainly then to either combat terrorism, or, the other end of it, to actually hold people accountable for their actions.”
The SEFF group has researched the extradition of republican suspects from the Republic to Northern Ireland.
Following inquiries by The Detail, officials at Westminster said records for the actual number of extradition requests are not retained by central government.
But from the data available, they could confirm that: “In the period between 1973 and 1997, at least 110 requests were made to the Republic of Ireland from the UK. At least 42 people were arrested and eight were extradited back to the UK.”
A House of Commons debate on extradition in 1982 provided some information on the reasons for decisions.
It detailed 45 refusals to extradite and found that in 34 cases this was because the offence was political, while in nine cases it was because there was no comparable offence in the Republic.
It was said that 17 extraditions fell because the suspects were eventually arrested in the UK and one was arrested and jailed in the Republic.
The Irish government became embroiled in a number of high profile extradition rows during the Troubles, but it defended the right of its legal system to maintain its own integrity.
And opponents of extradition also raised objections about the operation of justice in Northern Ireland, citing controversies that had brought criticism on the system.
The Irish government has, in the past, also cited the level of public spending it invested in Border security and argued it was proportionately on a par with investment by the larger UK economy.
`THE FORGOTTEN MASSACRE’
BY the time the Troubles were being brought to an end, more than 3,600 people were killed.
The vast majority were killed in Northern Ireland, but the records show that 120 people were killed in the Republic, including members of the Garda and Irish army.
The biggest loss of life in the Republic was the loyalist car bombings of May 1974 in Dublin and Monaghan – representing a cross-border attack that, in this case, had been launched from Northern Ireland.
The death toll of 34 people was also the largest loss of life of any single day in the Troubles.
The bombings took place amid turmoil in Northern Ireland – as political unionism and violent loyalism hit out at the Sunningdale settlement that gave the Republic a limited say in Northern Ireland affairs.
When the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, deputy leader of the nationalist SDLP Seamus Mallon noted the similarities between the deals and dubbed it “Sunningdale for slow learners”.
But the people of Dublin and Monaghan paid a heavy price for the pact’s rejection in 1974.
Margaret Urwin of Justice for the Forgotten has campaigned for those bereaved and injured in the attacks.
“Three no warning bombs exploded in Dublin city centre, killing 27 people in Dublin and then an hour and a half later, a fourth no warning bomb exploded in Monaghan town.
“That bomb killed a further seven people.
“There were no arrests and no convictions and that is the same as we approach the 40th anniversary.”
`SAY NOTHING’
In the aftermath of the mass murder, police investigations were quickly wound-down. No one was held accountable for the killings on either side of the border.
It was decades before a public memorial was erected to the dead, and it was not until the late 1990s that the Irish government launched an inquiry.
In the intervening period, despite the scale of the atrocity, it was met with official silence.
“The Irish government seemed to take the view that they should just keep their heads down,” said the victims’ campaigner, speculating that politicians may have feared that the bombings could have fuelled IRA support.
“The bombing was very successful, from a Loyalist point of view, because it taught the Irish government a lesson – not to interfere in the affairs of Northern Ireland.
“And indeed they didn’t for quite a long time.”
In 2003 Judge Henry Barron’s report blamed the attack on the loyalist UVF and implicated members of theRUC and UDR associated with the so-called Glennane gang.
The loyalist gang has now been tied-in with the deaths of more than 120 people in new research by Justice for the Forgotten and another campaigning victims’ group, the Pat Finucane Centre, which drew on reports compiled by the police Historical Enquiries Team, and was published in the book Lethal Allies.
But for Margaret Urwin, further details could come to light if the British government agreed to release all the documentation linked to the Dublin/Monaghan bombings and other attacks.
“The one thorny issue remaining is the failure of the British government to cooperate in any meaningful way with Judge Barron’s investigation.”
She said both the British and Irish governments have questions to answer from the past.
“It cannot be left to the northern parties alone to deal with the past – it has to be both governments as well.
See below Part Three of this article:
Political battle lines. By Steven McCaffery, February 3 2014
THE Irish government is avoiding a “hidden history” that ties it to the birth of the Provisional IRA, Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson has told The Detail.
In his most outspoken comments to date on the legacy of the Troubles and the role of the Irish government, he accused Dublin of “drawing a blind” over uncomfortable episodes of history.
The Irish government declined to be interviewed, but in a defence of the record of the State, Micheál Martin of opposition party Fianna Fáil said it was not culpable for IRA crimes.
Mr Martin said: “While there may be some who believe there is merit in presenting successive Irish Governments as facilitators for the horrific violence in Northern Ireland, it serves only a narrow and negative agenda and it is just not true.”
He said he shared the pain and anger felt over IRA violence, but he said inaccuracies about the past should not be allowed to “undermine the hard won trust and improved North-South relations”.
Mr Robinson raised issues linked to the Arms Trial of 1970 and said an army officer and two government ministers were `scapegoated’ in court to distract from controversial claims that the Irish government of the day was preparing to arm Northern Ireland Catholics.
“There have been a number of journalistic inquiries into the Arms Trial issues which showed a very clear responsibility on the part of the State,” said the DUP leader.
“But it has been buried. People don’t want to talk about it.
“It’s not a case of being embarrassed, they seem to be offended if the issue is raised, but at the same time are quite happy to point the finger at the British State in terms of issues where they are unhappy.”
He called for all government files on the Arms Trial era to be opened to independent scrutiny.
“We have not been able to get the documentation. It is abundantly clear that the responsibility that seemed to fall on (Capt James) Kelly, was one that was placed on him by the State.”
The authorities in Dublin have always denied the arms plot had government sanction, but Mr Robinson said: “It is a period of time which shows very clearly that the Irish State was funding the guns going to the Provisional IRA, was preparing itself to invade Northern Ireland, and now of course they sit back and try and draw a blind over this area of history.”
He denied that his party was levelling allegations against the Irish Republic in a bid to counter the existing evidence of collusion between British state forces and paramilitaries. Mr Robinson said the vast majority of killings in the Troubles were carried out by paramilitaries, not security forces.
Challenged on whether, in fact, it was violent unionist opposition to civil rights reforms for the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland that had led to the 1969 crisis, he said: “It would be right to say that it started in Northern Ireland but it would be entirely wrong to say that those who helped fund the Provisional IRA, start the Provisional IRA, an organisation that went on to kill thousands of people, was some side issue of history, there is very considerable blame on those who were involved in that exercise.”
THE TROUBLES STARTED IN BELFAST – NOT DUBLIN
He said: “The crisis in Northern Ireland had its origins in the failure of the Stormont Government of that time to properly address the legitimate concerns of the Civil Rights movement; preferring instead violent repression which created the breeding ground for the pointless and horrific violence which blighted the following 30 years.”
Mr Martin was not responding directly to Mr Robinson, but he said he felt he had some understanding of theDUP position.
He said he recognised the pain and anger caused by IRA violence during the Troubles: “I understand this anger. Indeed, I share it.”
Mr Martin added: “The death of almost 1,800 men, women and children at the hands of the IRA was a hideous crime against their neighbours, against their country and against the proud ambitions of Irish Republicanism.
“But it is not a crime for which the Irish Government has culpability. “
He called for all parties to discuss the past but to avoid a “grotesquely inaccurate narrative”.
“It is a narrative which distorts the facts of an unprecedented crisis in Irish history and deliberately ignores the decades of concerted policy and action in the Republic of Ireland aimed at thwarting the subversive threat posed by violent republicanism and loyalism.”
He said the British and Irish governments had neglected the peace process and had to re-engage.
`EXTRADITION LEVELS MUST BE EXPLAINED’
Meanwhile Ulster Unionist Peer Lord Empey, who raised the issue of extradition at Westminster said the figures were shocking.
“The figures on the requests for extradition and the outcomes, while not complete, reveal that a staggering number of applications were either refused or put on the long finger,” he said.
“How many of those sought went on to commit further acts of terror? How many evaded justice altogether?
“When I hear people talking about the past and trying to re-write history it is clear that the Irish State has a lot of questions to answer.
“Some Irish politicians have concentrated on supporting calls for enquiries in Northern Ireland because of allegations made against UK forces, but perhaps they need to examine their own past actions or inactions.
“Many in Northern Ireland saw the refusal to extradite so many suspects as a form of ‘shielding’ of suspects from justice, even though the Irish State would argue that there were constitutional obstacles. However that alone won’t wash with the many victims and survivors in the whole of the UK.”
