Ireland's Violent Frontier

The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations During the Troubles

H. Patterson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349335657, 9780230299962
• eBook ISBN: 9781137314024
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: European Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The IRA's ability to exploit the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland was central to the organisation's capacity to wage its 'Long War' over a quarter of a century. This book is the first to look at the role of the border in sustaining the Provisionals and its central role in Anglo-Irish relations throughout the Troubles.

1

The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations 1969–73

Jack Lynch and the northern crisis

The Irish state was born out of an armed struggle against British rule. This and a subsequent civil war (1922–3), which had been fought in part over issues of sovereignty and the remnants of British influence, produced a party system structured around different versions of Irish nationalism. Cumann na nGaedhael (from 1933 Fine Gael), the party of the victors in the civil war, formed the first government of the new state. Its leader, W. T. Cosgrave, in 1925 reluctantly accepted the right of Northern Ireland to remain outside the state, while remaining committed to the long-term goal of a united Ireland. As the party that founded the state by militarily defeating more militant republicans, it put a high priority on state security and law and order. However, it lost power in 1932 to the party that would go on to dominate Irish electoral politics in the twentieth century, Fianna Fáil, and its leader, Eamon de Valera. Fianna Fáil combined economic and social populism with a rhetorically militant nationalism. It had maintained strong personal and ideological links with the IRA into the 1930s and proclaimed itself ‘The Republican Party’. Its constitution put the ending of partition as its first aim, although the practicality of this objective was called into question by the party’s commitments to economic protectionism and its commitment to a conception of Ireland as Gaelic-speaking and Catholic. De Valera had little sympathy for or understanding of Ulster Unionists, seeing them as a religious minority within the Irish nation, with no right of self-determination. Partition was the product of a British strategy to maintain a strategic foothold in Ireland and consequently the way to end partition was through effecting a shift in policy in London: Unionists, once they were forsaken by their imperial sponsors, would be forced to accept unity.¹ This attitude was embodied in the new Irish constitution which de Valera promoted and which was ratified in a referendum in 1937. This redefined the character of the Free State by making it more Catholic, Gaelic and nationalist, and in Articles 2 and 3 laid territorial and jurisdictional claims to Northern Ireland.

After de Valera’s retirement in 1959 his successor Sean Lemass radically transformed Irish economic policy away from protection towards free trade and membership of the EEC. This had entailed liberalising trade relations with the UK and Lemass had also promoted a policy of engagement with the government in Belfast, something eschewed by his predecessor. Lemass’s successor, Jack Lynch, maintained his moderation in relations with Northern Ireland and London, but the onset of the crisis of the northern state in 1968 created a resurgence of a more traditional republican agenda in Fianna Fáil.

On succeeding Lemass as party leader and Taoiseach in 1966, Lynch maintained his predecessor’s policy of engagement and co-operation with Northern Ireland.² However, he had difficulties with leading figures in his government who regarded him as little more than a caretaker leader, who would be replaced eventually by someone more aligned with the party’s republican values. Neil Blaney, the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries, and Kevin Boland, Minister for Local Government, were both sons of prominent founding members of the party, whereas Lynch had no such pedigree. Blaney was a TD for the border constituency of Donegal North-East and regarded himself as having particular insight into the conditions and needs of Northern Ireland’s Catholic community. At the time he was the only minister with a real demonstrable interest in the North. His was a fundamentalist position based on certainties of traditional territorial nationalism. Blaney was a senior and powerful figure in the party, and Lynch’s acquiescence in his leading role in developing links with northern nationalists and republicans would cast a long shadow over Fianna Fáil’s policies.

His main ally as the situation in the North deteriorated was the Minister of Finance, Charles Haughey.³ Dr Conor Cruise O’Brien, an Irish Labour Party TD at the time, claimed that up to August 1969 ‘no one identified Mr. Haughey with the republican current in Irish politics’. As Lemass’s son-in-law, and associated with Lemass’s policy of détente with Northern Ireland, Haughey was regarded with suspicion by proponents of traditional republicanism who were also scandalised by his opulent lifestyle.⁴ As Minister of Justice in the early 1960s he had not hesitated to adopt repressive measures against the failing IRA campaign. However, there is evidence to demonstrate that he was possessed of a deep-rooted anti-partitionist impulse.⁵ He had been associated with a memorandum submitted to the National Executive of Fianna Fáil in the mid-1950s advocating the use of force to end partition. This reflected his family’s roots in Northern Ireland. His parents were both from Swatragh in south Derry. Both had been active in the republican movement during the War of Independence and, although he was brought up in the Free State, he returned to south Derry for holidays and claimed to have witnessed sectarian riots in 1935 as well as heavy-handed policing by B Specials.⁶ Haughey had little sympathy for Lemass’s gradualism on Northern Ireland and regarded his father-in-law as a ‘pragmatic nationalist rather than a true republican’.⁷ His views were strongly impressed on the British ambassador, Sir Andrew Gilchrist, who was summoned to a meeting at Haughey’s home in November 1969 to hear the Minister suggest that Britain might consider a deal whereby, in return for a united Ireland, the British navy would get access to Irish ports or, as an alternative, NATO would be given access to them. According to Gilchrist ‘there was nothing he would not sacrifice including the position of the Catholic church, to achieve a united Ireland’.⁸

Fianna Fáil hawks drew strength from the political culture of the party, which harboured a strong traditional republicanism that was unsympathetic to the Lemass/Lynch approach to Northern Ireland. The Irish Press, the Fianna Fáil-aligned daily with a circulation of over 100,000 in the late 1960s, had long been a bastion of traditionalism and was cool towards co-operation with the northern state. After the first clash between the RUC and a civil rights march in Derry on 5 October 1968 the paper’s editorials took an increasingly militant line, championing the civil rights movement for its capacity to provoke a crisis of the northern state.⁹ The explosion of the Bogside on August 12 1969 was greeted with undisguised glee:

Virtual civil war hit Derry in the wake of the Taoiseach’s speech when 5000 cheering men, women and children, hurling petrol bombs and stones, waving the Tricolour and shouting ‘Up the Republic’ charged the RUC and B Specials and drove them out of the Bogside.¹⁰

The television pictures of the Derry fighting and then of the devastated Catholic streets in Belfast had an electrifying effect in the Republic. They were the context for a number of meetings of the Irish cabinet where Lynch’s moderate line came under pressure from Blaney and Haughey, who favoured sending the Irish army across the border in order to create an international incident, involve the UN and reopen the partition question. However, this was rejected by most ministers and the immediate response of the government was a series of measures designed to give the impression that the Irish state would not ignore the plight of northern Catholics. An initial draft of Lynch’s speech was toughened up to include the ambiguous line that his government ‘can no longer stand by’ and he also announced that the Irish army was moving to the border to set up five field hospitals. The use of the British army in the North was opposed, and he called on Britain to enter into negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland. The Ministers of Defence and Finance were tasked with investigating the state of preparedness of the defence forces and making any arrangements necessary to augment their capabilities. The Minister of Justice was asked to expand the intelligence services maintained by the Garda Síochána in Northern Ireland. Most significantly in light of the subsequent governmental crisis over arms, £100,000 was provided for the immediate relief of distress to be dispersed at the discretion of the Minister of Finance, and a new four-member sub-committee established with the task of overseeing all aspects of government policy on Northern Ireland.¹¹

Along with the dispatch of the Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs to New York to raise the crisis at the UN, these measures were designed, according to the Minister, Patrick Hillery, to give the impression that Dublin was taking action and still the voices that were demanding militancy and direct intervention. However, even if this were the case they were to have very negative unintended consequences. For as the Dublin magazine Hibernia noted of the effects of the government’s response to August 1969:

The manner of Jack Lynch’s intervention infused a wholly new energy into the whole republican movement and a sobering consideration for the southern government is the future effect, south of the border, of this replenished stream of republican emotion and its new familiarisation with the rule of the gun.¹²

Sinn Féin, the political wing of a still-united IRA, exploited popular concern about what was happening in the North by organising nightly meetings in Dublin’s O’Connell Street attended by several thousand people demanding that the government provide guns for the defence of Catholics in the North. The Belfast Labour politician, Paddy Devlin, told the crowd that Belfast Catholics needed guns to defend themselves from the security forces and loyalist mobs.¹³ Sinn Féin organised solidarity meetings across the Republic and the growth of nationalist feeling sparked by events in Northern Ireland led to a quickly expanding membership. Initially, at least, leading republicans believed they had an understanding with government ministers that as long as their activities were confined to the North, they would not be harassed by the Garda. Seán MacStíofáin, who was to be the first Chief of Staff of the Provisional IRA, relates how he operated from a base on the south Armagh border collecting weapons to be used in Northern Ireland and claims that the Gardaí did not interfere with his operations as they knew the weapons were for use in the North.¹⁴

If some Gardaí did turn a blind eye to IRA activities along the border, this could have reflected a perception that senior members of the government were in favour of militant action in Northern Ireland. For, although the Cabinet had ruled out military intervention, Lynch had allowed Blaney and Haughey a significant input into policies towards the North. Haughey, as Minister of Finance, was given control of a relief fund of £100,000 and he was also, along with Blaney and two other ministers from border constituencies, on the new sub-committee tasked with liaising with northern nationalists. The committee met once¹⁵ and the task of dealing with the northern opposition was then monopolised by Haughey and Blaney, thus sowing the seeds of what became known as the Arms Crisis. Soon after the August violence the Minister of Justice, Michael O’Morain, informed the government that he had a report from Special Branch that an Irish government minister had met the Chief of Staff of the IRA, Cathal Goulding. Haughey then admitted that he was the minister in question, although he denied that the meeting had been of any consequence.¹⁶ In fact Haughey and Blaney had begun to develop links with some of the most militant elements in Northern Ireland through a network of Irish army intelligence officers and government officials seconded to work with northern nationalists.¹⁷ The main intelligence officer, Captain James Kelly, whose brother was a priest on the Falls Road, was a frequent visitor to Northern Ireland. For Kelly, the violence of August 1969 not only required that the Irish government provide assistance for the defence of beleaguered Catholic communities, but also provided an historic opportunity to complete the business of national reunification. He favoured covert co-operation with the IRA in the North on the understanding that the first priority would be the defence of Catholic communities against attack and that republicans would disassociate themselves from the left-wing ideology of the Dublin leadership and concentrate on the goal of national reunification. Out of collaboration with the various ‘defence’ committees that had been set up in the North and which were largely controlled by republicans, Kelly and his ministerial sponsors saw radical possibilities:

It would seem to be now necessary to harness all opinion in the state to a concerted drive towards achieving the aim of unification. Unfortunately this would mean accepting the possibility of armed action of some sort as the ultimate solution, but if civil war embracing this area … was to result because of the unwillingness to accept that war is a continuation of politics by other means, it would be far the greater evil for the Irish nation.¹⁸

Haughey and Blaney were prepared to use part of the relief funds to arm and finance the IRA. They provided financing for a meeting in Bailieborough, County Cavan in October attended by representatives of the defence committees, which Kelly admitted was a cover for discussions of arming and training northern units of the IRA. In a report sent to his superior, the Director of Military Intelligence Colonel Michael Heffernon, Kelly set out republicans’ need for arms, to be imported through the South, and a range of training in weapons, demolition, intelligence and communications. There was originally a plan, organised by Heffernon, that this training would be carried out by the Irish...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Map of the Border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland
• Introduciton
• 1 The Border and Anglo-Irish Relations 1969-73
• 2 Security Co-operation and Sunningdale
• 3 The ‘Anti-National Coalition’ and Security Co-operation
• 4 Regression: Jack Lynch and the Border
• 5 Disarray on the Border and the Arrival of Thatcher
• 6 Haughey and Border Security
• Conclusion: ‘Buying Themselves into Having a Political Say’
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index