Abyss, 1966–1978
‘I now categorically state that at no time have I taken part in any illegal importation or attempted importation of arms into this country.’
[Charles J. Haughey, 9 May 1970]1
‘Derry came too soon’: Haughey and the Battle of the Bogside, August 1969
On his appointment as taoiseach and leader of Fianna Fáil in November 1966, Jack Lynch committed himself and his party to adhere to his predecessor Seán Lemass’s conciliatory approach towards the Ulster Unionist government, under the chairmanship of Northern Ireland prime minister Terence O’Neill, and to try and kick-start the stalled cross-border co-operation between Dublin and Belfast. However, by the autumn of 1968 simmering sectarian tensions on the streets of Northern Ireland brought a shattering halt to functional cross-border co-operation between the Irish and Northern Ireland governments.2
The catalyst was the attack by the RUC on a civil rights march in the centre of Derry/Londonderry on 5 October 1968. Broadcast throughout the world, ugly scenes emerged of the RUC indiscriminately attacking marchers with batons, including Nationalist MP for Foyle Derry, Eddie McAteer. Nationalist opinion was galvanised in response to the attacks and soon after McAteer announced that the Nationalist Party would no longer act as the official opposition at Stormont.
In response to the growing civil unrest in Northern Ireland, Neil Blaney, minister for agriculture, publicly spoke out against the Northern Ireland government. At a Fianna Fáil gathering in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal, on 8 November, he described O’Neill as a ‘sham’ and significantly said that cross-border government discussions had proved ‘a futile exercise’.3 The following month, to Lynch’s irritation, Blaney again declared his opposition to the partition of Ireland, even hinting that in the pursuit of his goal of a united Ireland the use of force was justified.4 The following year, 9 April, speaking at a dinner in Derry in honour of Eddie McAteer, Blaney once again demanded that the British government hand over Northern Ireland to the Republic, describing partition as a ‘temporary expedient’.5
Blaney’s speech, rather than being rebuffed by Fianna Fáil headquarters, was widely endorsed. On 14 April 1969, at a meeting of the party’s national executive, attended by approximately forty-five senior party members, ‘congratulations’ were offered to Blaney for his partition speech in Derry.6 Lynch’s silence was noteworthy. The problem that Blaney’s periodic attacks created, as noted by Donnacha Ó Beacháin, was not that he was opposing Fianna Fáil policy: ‘in fact it was the reverse’. By offering the traditional anti-partitionist approach to Northern Ireland, Blaney was impairing Lynch’s ability to formulate government strategy on partition, as his actions placed an ‘ideological straitjacket on Lynch’.7
Blaney’s outbursts heralded the outbreak of an anti-partition virus, which by August 1969, infected the Southern body politic. This virus was to spread like an epidemic throughout Fianna Fáil, infecting every strand of the organisation from cabinet ministers to grass-roots supporters. Although Lynch tried to introduce quarantine measures, his actions proved wholly inadequate. Unlike Blaney, during Lynch’s initial years as taoiseach, Haughey rarely involved himself with the Northern Ireland question. Except for his private (and extremely revealing) comments in April 1969 that he saw no moral objection to the use of force but only a practical one,8 Haughey was content to allow Blaney to beat the anti-partitionist drum in the public domain. The outbreak of widespread sectarian rioting in Derry on 13 August 1969, however, awoke Haughey from his anti-partitionist slumber. In words echoing those famously spoken by Lynch during the heights of this crisis, Haughey could ‘no longer stand by’ as Northern Ireland Catholics were indiscriminately attacked, burnt out of their homes and harassed by the RUC, the B-Specials and Loyalist mobs.
The Battle of the Bogside of mid-August 1969, televised around the world, represented a total breakdown of law and order on the streets of Derry. The crisis commenced following the holding of an annual Apprentice Boys’ march in the heart of Derry city on the afternoon of 12 August. Following skirmishes between young Catholic youths, mostly from the Bogside and members of the procession, the RUC intervened to end the violence. However, by the evening of 12 August, after enduring an onslaught of missiles and stones, a cohort of RUC officers retaliated, throwing stones at the Catholic protesters. The RUC officers were soon joined by a Protestant mob, which supported the RUC in their quest to gain access to the Bogside area.
Assembled television cameras broadcast images across the world of the Bogside Catholics desperately trying to halt the RUC and Protestant hooligans from entering the Bogside. The RUC, equipped with armoured cars and water cannons, then made the ill-fated decision to permit the use of CS gas. In retaliation, a large crowd of Catholics, under the auspices of the recently formed Derry Citizens’ Action Committee, built numerous barricades around the entranceways to the Bogside. ‘The Battle of the Bogside’, as it subsequently became known, was underway. From this relatively minor incident developed a riot, which enveloped Derry for over two days and nights and was not brought under control until the arrival of the British Army into Derry on the evening of 14 August 1969.9
As the battle continued on the streets of Derry and quickly throughout other parts of Northern Ireland, notably in Belfast, the Fianna Fáil government tried desperately to deal with the unfolding political crisis. Patrick Hillery, recently appointed minister for external affairs, had predicted that some skirmishes would invariably break out on the streets of Derry following the annual Apprentice Boys’ march.10 Hillery, however, like the rest of his cabinet colleagues in Dublin, severely underestimated both the humanitarian and political scale of this crisis. In fact, the outbreak of sectarian violence on the streets of Northern Ireland in August 1969 exposed the crushing reality that Fianna Fáil had no coherent, or indeed realistic, Northern Ireland policy. It brought Fianna Fáil face to face with one of its most blatant contradictions: the gap between its rhetoric and the reality of its attitude to Irish unity.
The Fianna Fáil cabinet first met to discuss the unfolding crisis in Northern Ireland on the afternoon of 13 August. At the meeting, at approximately 2.30pm, a consortium of vocal anti-partitionist ministers, led by Blaney and Haughey, bitterly argued with Lynch and his cabinet supporters over what constituted official Fianna Fáil Northern Ireland policy. By this juncture, in the words of Ronan Fanning, Blaney and Haughey had come to despise the moderation of Lynch’s Northern Ireland policy.11 Haughey, supported by Blaney and minister for local government, Kevin Boland, demanded that the Irish army be sent into Derry or Newry or both to offer, at the very least, support to the beleaguered Catholic populations.12 Haughey maintained that the use of physical force, in the appropriate circumstances, had always represented official Fianna Fáil policy and that the outbreak of the violence was an opportunity to undermine partition and force Britain to concede to a united Ireland.13 Haughey argued that an incursion by the Irish army into Northern Ireland would, at the very least, create an international incident and thus provoke the intervention of a United Nations peacekeeping force.14
Tempers were fraught; even known moderate ministers, such as minister for transport Brian Lenihan and minister for defence Jim Gibbons, were ‘very excited’.15 Lynch was under huge pressure as he desperately tried to advocate that only peaceful actions could secure Irish unity. The absence of both Patrick Hillery and minister for justice Michael Moran did little to help Lynch’s position. Hillery’s absence, in particular, a rational and moderate figure within the government and a close ally of the taoiseach, gave more leeway to the Blaney/Haughey caucus in the cabinet (Hillery was on a painting holiday on Achill Island off Co. Mayo, with John Healy of the Irish Times and did not receive notification of the hastily arranged cabinet meeting until the afternoon of 13 August).16
Lynch’s lack of perceived republican credentials played an important part in understanding his battles to retain authority among his ministerial colleagues in relation to Northern Ireland policy. As Pádraig Faulkner, a member of Lynch’s consecutive Fianna Fáil cabinets from 1969 to 1973, explained: Lynch ‘was the first Fianna Fáil leader not to have had any involvement,
