‘A Greek Authoritarian Phase’? The Irish Army and the Irish Crisis, 1969–70

Abstract

This paper discusses the role of the Irish defence forces in 1969–70 as the Irish state reacted to the emergence of the Northern troubles. Ireland had never envisaged using its army to take by force what Britain would not concede through negotiation. In the absence of an obvious external threat, and because of the legacy of the 1924 army mutiny, the state maintained only very small and ill‐equipped forces, trained exclusively for conventional warfare and actively discouraged from any strategic or tactical study of Northern Ireland. The gun‐running plans and other clandestine schemes promoted by an army intelligence officer and disclosed in the 1970 arms crisis were correctly interpreted in London as a conspiracy led by two ambitious ministers impatient at the relative restraint of government policy, rather than as the secret element of a two‐pronged Irish policy of overt reasonableness and covert destabilisation of Northern Ireland. The article also maintains that there was no possibility at any point of a military coup against the Lynch government.

Acknowledgements

This article is an output of a research project funded by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Notes

1. Sir Andrew Gilchrist to Sir Denis Greenhill, 6 June 1970, The National Archives, London (TNA), FCO33/1214.

2. Draft report by Gilchrist, 30 January 1969, Churchill College Cambridge Archives (CCCA), Gilchrist papers, GILC5/14C.

3. Gilchrist to Sir Burke Trend (secretary to the cabinet), 24 November 1971, TNA, FO33/1214.

4. Observation to the author by a retired army officer stationed in a border area in 1969–70.

5. See decode of German minister, Dublin, to Berlin, 29 October 1941, TNA, DO121/84.

6. Liddell diary, 8 February 1944, TNA, KV4/193.

7. Mackenzie King diary, 9 September 1948, accessed on 5 February 2008 via http://king.archives.ca/. W.L. Mackenzie King was the long serving prime minister of Canada.

8. Director of Military Intelligence to secretary, Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC), 13 June 1949, TNA, KV4/281.

9. Note by White, 24 January 1955, quoted in O'Halpin (2008a: 298).

10. Author's interviews with two successive JIC secretaries from 1968 to 1974.

11. Dr Terry O'Neill, ‘The Irish Defence Forces and the Onset of the Northern Ireland Crisis in 1969’, Research Seminar in Contemporary Irish History, Trinity College Dublin, 31 January 2008. Colonel O'Neill served for over 40 years in the defence forces.

12. O'Neill to Wilson, 19 January 1965, and Arthur Bottomley to Wilson, 22 July 1965, TNA, PREM13/983.

13. See minutes of evidence, 17 February 1970, Committee of Public Accounts (1971).

14. Dáil Debates, vol. 241, cols. 1806–07, 23 October 1969.

15. See Suttle's comments, 17 February 1970, in Committee of Public Accounts (1971); O'Halpin interview with E. F. Suttle, 1984.

16. In This Week, 15 October 1971.

17. Note of meeting between Wilson and Lemass, 13 December 1965, TNA, PREM13/49. This writer is a member of the Department of Justice's Archives Advisory Group, which has access to closed Justice security records. See its interim report of 25 September 2006 to the minister for justice, accessed on 12 February 2008 at http://www.justice.ie/en/JELR/archives%20advisory%20group.doc/Files/archives%20advisory%20group.doc.

18. JIC minutes, 17 March 1966, TNA, CAB159/45.

19. JIC minutes, 21 April 1966, TNA, CAB159/45.

20. Gilchrist to London, 5 July 1968, TNA, FCO23/192.

21. Home secretary to Gilchrist, 5 September 1969, Gilchrist papers, GILC 962/14B; JIC (A) (69), 18 September 1969, TNA, CAB185/9. The JIC's role is discussed in detail in O'Halpin, (2008b).

22. Draft despatch to London, 1 August 1969, Gilchrist papers, GILC 14A.

23. Draft despatch to London, 4 October 1969, Gilchrist papers, GILC 14B; extracts from Gilchrist diary notes, 18 March 1970, Gilchrist papers, GILC 14A.

24. British ambassador to army headquarters, Northern Ireland, 21 September 1971, FCO33/1616.

25. Speech by Michael Smith TD, minister for defence, at the unveiling of a gravestone for Cornelius Coughlan VC, 6 August 2004, accessed on 13 February 2008 at http://www.defence.ie/website.nsf/$$ViewTemplate%20for%20Speeches?openform.

26. Judgement by Chief Justice Keane, 23 Jan. 2001, accessed on 13 February 2008 at http://www.courts.ie/Judgments.nsf/.

27. White to Piper (British embassy, Dublin), 23 April 1070, and enclosed draft proposal, and Piper to White, 6 May 1970, TNA, FCO33/1085.

28. Interview with the late Colonel Dan Bryan, 1983. Bryan, director of intelligence from 1941 to 1952, believed that Kelly had been beguiled by the ‘Manchester tactical school’. This was a reference to the writings of Professor M.R.D. Foot, the official historian of SOE in France and in the Low Countries, and a tireless champion of that controversial agency's wartime record. The late Colonel Con Costello made a similar observation to me in 1997 about the sources of Captain Kelly's ideas about insurgency.

29. Remark made to me by Captain Kelly in Trinity College in April 2000, during a conversation in which he said he was going to sue. I am very grateful to Eugene Davy and to Paul O'Higgins SC for legal advice which saw off a subsequent attempt to initiate proceedings.

30. Foreign and Commonwealth Office to British ambassador, Dublin, 20 May 1970, reporting Sir Edward Peck's comments to the Irish ambassador. TNA, FCO33/1206.

31. Speaking note for cabinet meeting, 7 May 1970, and memorandum by Kelvin White, 15 May 1970, TNA, FCO33/1205.

32. United Kingdom representative, Belfast, to Foreign Office, 26 May 1970, FCO33/1206.

33. British ambassador, Dublin, to FCO, 15 May 1970, TNA, FCO33/1205.

34. Military attaché, Dublin, to Ministry of Defence, 6 January 1971, TNA, FCO33/1616.