Haughey's Forty Years of Controversy (8 page)

‘As far as I could see,' Boland explained, ‘everyone assumed everyone else knew and the matter was spoken of as if it was a case of the government assisting in the only way a government could assist without a diplomatic breach.'

Following a cabinet meeting on 6 February 1970, defence minister Jim Gibbons actually ordered army Chief of Staff Lt Gen. Seán McKeown to prepare for involvement in Northern Ireland. ‘I was instructed to direct you to prepare the army for incursions into Northern Ireland,' Gibbons said.

‘The Taoiseach and other ministers have met delegations from the north,' he continued. The Nationalist people of Northern Ireland were largely defenceless at the time, and they were terrified that Unionists thugs, who were armed, as many of them were members of so-called gun clubs, would massacre them. Thus, Nationalists visiting Dublin pleaded for weapons that they could use to defend themselves. ‘At these meetings urgent demands were made for respirators, weapons and ammunition the provision of which the government agreed,' Gibbons explained. ‘Accordingly truck loads of these stores will be put at readiness so that they may be available in a matter of hours.'

In short, Gibbons told the chief of staff that the government had agreed to provide weapons for Nationalist civilians in Northern Ireland. To avoid confusion the army asked for a clarification the following week. ‘The military assume that incursion would only be mounted in circumstances where there would be a complete breakdown of law and order in N. Ireland', it was noted. Gibbons confirmed this. Thus, the directive was an order to prepare a contingency plan so that the army could respond ‘in a matter of hours'.

During February, Minister for Defence Gibbons secured authorisation for Capt. Kelly to go to Germany to purchase the weapons, which consisted of 200 sub machine guns, 84 light machine guns, 50 general-purpose machine guns, 50 rifles, 200 grenades, 200 pistols and 250,000 rounds of ammunition.

Upon his return he gave the details to Jim Gibbons. Initially it was planned to bring the guns from Belgium to Dublin port on a ship, the
City of Dublin
. In his capacity as Minister for Finance, Charlie instructed customs to clear the cargo without inspecting it, but the cargo had not been loaded because of a problem with the paperwork. British intelligence, which was aware of the scheme, had ensured the paperwork was not in order.

Capt. Kelly went to the continent to have the cargo transferred to Trieste for shipment to Ireland, but while it was en route he had it off-loaded in Vienna so that it could be flown directly to Ireland on a chartered plane.

Plans were made for the weapons to be flown to Dublin on Tuesday, 21 April 1970. But the special branch staked out the airport with the aim of seizing the cargo.

Brian Lenihan, the Minister for Transport, tipped off Col Hefferon. Haughey was then informed, and he telephone Peter Berry, who immediately recognised his voice. ‘You know about the cargo that is coming into Dublin airport on Sunday?' Charlie asked.

‘Yes, minister.'

‘Can it be let through on a guarantee that it will go direct to the north?'

‘No.'

‘I think that is a bad decision,' Charlie said. ‘Does the man from Mayo [the Minister for Justice] know?'

‘Yes.'

‘What will happen to it when it arrives?'

‘It will be grabbed,' replied Berry.

‘I had better have it called off,' Charlie said and then hung up.

‘I made notes there and then in my personal diary as to what Mr Haughey said,' Berry later explained.

‘All this could not have gone on for several months without the knowledge of the Taoiseach unless he was wilfully turning the blind eye,' he concluded. He therefore decided the time had come to get in touch with President de Valera in order to force Lynch's hand.

Berry did not actually give de Valera any details, he just asked him what he should do about some information ‘of national concern' when he was not sure the information would get to the Taoiseach by the normal channel. He was not actually looking for advice; he knew the president would tell him to go directly to Lynch. His real aim was simply to involve de Valera in the hope of getting some action from Lynch.

‘By consulting the president, and telling the Taoiseach that I had consulted the president,' Berry wrote, ‘I would be pushing the Taoiseach towards an enforcement of the rule of law.'

Berry told the Taoiseach on the morning of 20 April 1970. Lynch immediately instructed him to have the whole matter investigated thoroughly and to report again the following morning, when Berry confirmed the involvement of Charlie and Blaney. Lynch decided to interview the two ministers the following day, but that was the day that Charlie went to hospital following his famous ‘riding accident'.

‘I ultimately got the doctor's permission and I decided to interview Deputy Haughey in hospital on Wednesday 29 April,' Lynch explained to the Dáil. Before the meeting the Taoiseach was very agitated. ‘What will I do, what will I do?' he kept muttering as he paced about his office.

‘Well, if I were you,' Berry said, ‘I'd sack the pair of them and I would tell the British immediately, making a virtue of necessity, as the British are bound to know, anyway, all that is going on.'

But Lynch had not been looking for advice. He was just talking to himself and he abused Berry for having the impertinence to advise him.

The Taoiseach spoke to Blaney first and then went to the hospital to speak to Charlie. Each denied instigating ‘in any way the attempted importation of arms,' Lynch told the Dáil. ‘They asked me for time to consider their position. I agreed to do so.'

At this point Lynch apparently hoped that the whole thing could be swept under the carpet. He told Berry that the two ministers had assured him there would be no repetition and he therefore considered the matter closed. Berry was stunned. ‘Does that mean Mr Haughey remains Minister for Finance?' he asked incredulously. ‘What will my position be? He knows that I have told you of his conversation with me on 18 April and of the earlier police information.'

‘I will protect you,' Lynch replied.

Next day the Taoiseach told his cabinet that he had decided to accept the denials of the two ministers. But, according to Boland, he warned ‘that henceforth no minister should take any action in regard to requests for assistance from the six counties without approval.'

Boland went straight to Charlie and told him the news. Although Boland thought the crisis was over, it was really only beginning. The story had been leaked to Liam Cosgrave, the Fine Gael leader. He tried to interest the
Sunday Independent
and the
Irish Independent
in the story, but their editors thought it too hot to handle.

On 5 May Lynch announced the resignation of Micheál Ó Moráin as Minister for Justice on the grounds of ill-health. Although rumours were already circulating about the arms plot, the Taoiseach managed to skirt questions about further possible resignations. At eight o'clock that evening, however, Cosgrave confronted Lynch with the story. ‘I considered it my duty in the national interest to inform the Taoiseach of information I had received which indicates a situation of such gravity for the nation that it is without parallel in this country since the foundation of the state,' Cosgrave told the Dáil.

That night Lynch demanded the resignations of Charlie and Blaney, but both refused. He therefore requested President de Valera to remove them from office in accordance with the constitution. The Taoiseach made his early morning announcement to the press.

At a meeting of the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party the following afternoon, Charlie joined Blaney and the other members of the party in unanimously upholding the Taoiseach's right to remove them. The Dáil then began a continuous sitting that was to last for over 37 hours straight as it debated the crisis. Tension was running so high that scuffles broke out in the lobbies. ‘It was not clear who was directly involved, but some deputies had to restrain others,' the
Irish Independent
reported.

Charlie did not take part in the debate but he voted with the government, as did Blaney and Boland. Members of Fianna Fáil seemed pre-occupied with retaining power.

‘The necessity to keep the Fianna Fáil government in power at all costs was the overriding consideration,' Berry concluded. ‘What was happening in the Lynch regime would have been unthinkable under Mr Lemass or Mr de Valera. The naked face of self-interest in ministerial circles was on exhibition without any attempts at concealment from the serving civil servants.'

Following the Dáil vote, Charlie issued a statement denying having ‘taken part in any illegal importation or attempted importation of arms into this country'. He repeated this on 25 May in a further statement in which he endorsed the Taoiseach's view that ‘not even the slightest suspicion should attach to any member of the government'.

‘I have fully accepted the Taoiseach's decision, as I believe that the unity of the Fianna Fáil party is of greater importance to the welfare of the nation than my political career,' Charlie emphasised. He was facing possible criminal charges and this was a desperate appeal to Fianna Fáil's traditional solidarity. But the appeal was in vain. Three days later he was arrested and taken from home in a police car like a common criminal.

Although the media was slow to question Lynch's motives in dismissing Charlie and Blaney from the cabinet, there could be little doubt that political considerations played a major part in determining the timing of their arrest. As both still enjoyed support within the parliamentary party, there was a danger their supporters might react emotionally and bring down the government in a fit of pique.

The arrests were therefore delayed until Thursday, 28 May 1970. The Dáil broke up early that day for the bank holiday weekend and would not reconvene until the following Wednesday. This afforded deputies an opportunity to get over their initial shock and they had time to ponder the consequences of bringing down the government.

The charge of conspiring to import arms illegally was subsequently dropped against Blaney, but Charlie was returned for trial, along with three others – Capt. James Kelly, John Kelly, a Belfast Republican and a Belgian businessman, Albert Luykx.

The trial began on 22 September 1970. In his opening statement the chief prosecutor appeared to sensationalise the forthcoming testimony for the benefit of the media by quoting what Peter Berry would have to say about his telephone call from Charlie on 18 April. It was obvious, one observer concluded, that the prosecution's tactics were to ‘Gut Haughey and gut him fast'.

The defendants stood indicted of having ‘conspired together and with other persons unknown to import arms and ammunition illegally into the state' between 1 March and 24 April 1970. To prove the case against Charlie the state was depending on the testimony of three prosecution witnesses, Jim Gibbons, Peter Berry and Anthony Fagan.

Fagan was the first to testify. He told the court that Capt. Kelly came to see Charlie on 19 March. As the minister was engaged, the captain told Fagan that the unspecified cargo, about which he had told Charlie the previous month, would be arriving on the
City of Dublin
on 25 March. He asked if customs could be instructed to admit the consignment without inspecting it. Assured that he had the authority to do so, Charlie gave the necessary instructions.

Berry told the court of his telephone conversation with Charlie on 18 April. He read a verbatim account of the conversation from notes he made in his diary at the time.

Taking the witness stand on the third day of the trial Jim Gibbons testified that he had been uneasy about what Capt. Kelly was doing and so asked Charlie to find another job for him in March 1970. ‘We'll make a pig smuggling prevention officer of him,' Charlie suggested.

Gibbons went on to testify that Charlie told him in early April that he was not aware of any conspiracy to import guns. They both agreed at this meeting that collective government action was the only way ‘in matters of this kind'.

Later in the month they had a further conversation, according to Gibbons, who was not sure whether the conversation took place on 17 or 20 April.

In his statement in the
Book of Evidence
Gibbons described their discussion as a telephone conversation, but he corrected this on the witness stand. He had telephoned Charlie to arrange an urgent meeting, and they then got together in Charlie's office.

‘I told him of certain telephone calls that had come to the Department of Defence concerning the shipment of weapons and ammunition into the country,' Gibbons testified, ‘and I asked him if he knew this, and he said, “The dogs in the street are barking it”. I asked him if he were in a position to stop it, and he said, “I'll stop it for a month” or words to that effect. I said, “for God's sake, stop it altogether ”.'

Although the prosecutor had amassed impressive evidence about Charlie's involvement in the whole affair, the state's overall case was already in deep trouble. In order to make the charges stick against any of the accused, the prosecution had to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Gibbons had not authorised the importation of the arms, because if he had, then the attempt to bring them in was legal and there was no basis for the conspiracy charge.

While on the witness stand, Gibbons admitted that Capt. Kelly had told him at their first private meeting that he intended to help the northern people looking for guns. The captain had given him details of the
City of Dublin
fiasco and the fact that he had another plan to bring in the guns.

‘I seem to have a recollection of Capt. Kelly mentioning the possibility of having them shipped through a port in the Adriatic because I suggested to him – would that port possibly be Trieste,' Gibbons testified. He admitted that he did not even suggest that Capt. Kelly should have nothing to do with the planned gun-running.