Lynch did not intend to compromise and following a secret ballot, Boland was expelled from the Fianna Fáil parliamentary party, by sixty votes to eleven.161
The dust was allowed to settle for a few days. However, tensions again came to the surface on the evening of 22 June at a specially arranged meeting of the Fianna Fáil national executive. At the gathering, which lasted over four hours, Lynch demanded Boland’s removal as joint secretary of Fianna Fáil.162 Seán MacEntee was the taoiseach’s principal defender; he seconded a motion calling for Boland’s removal as joint secretary and for Dermot Ryan’s expulsion from the party’s national executive.163 ‘Jack Lynch,’ MacEntee noted, ‘whose record and conduct since he came into public life in the dark days of 1948, has entitled him to nothing but respect and esteem.’ He accused Boland of intentionally trying to divide Fianna Fáil. ‘No state, no party, no organisation,’ he bemoaned, ‘will prosper if it is encumbered with two leaders! Yet dual leadership is in effect what Kevin Boland is asking us to accept.’ ‘As this government cannot have two leaders,’ he said, ‘neither can it have two policies.’ If the national executive endorsed Boland’s policies, he warned, Fianna Fáil was in danger of imploding. ‘It will be the death too of any likely reunification ...’, he lamented.164
After much debate Boland and Ryan resigned as members of the national executive. In protest, Boland’s father Gerald Boland resigned as vice-president and trustee of the party, although he retained his Fianna Fáil membership. ‘I want no part of a party,’ Gerry Boland complained, ‘where an honourable man like my son appears to be an embarrassment.’165 Hillery subsequently wrote that Kevin Boland’s resignation ended the latter’s ‘spoilt child days’ around the cabinet table. Boland, Hillery noted, had ‘expected to be coerced to withdraw his resignation. But this time Jack did not coax him’.166
The rift between MacEntee and Boland soon became public. Writing in the Irish Times on 30 June, MacEntee publicly held Kevin Boland responsible ‘for the fires and killings which occurred in Belfast over the weekend’. Boland, he said, in advocating that Northern Catholics be supplied with guns for defensive purposes, held a ‘moral responsibility’ for ‘those who used their weapons against five Protestant Irishmen – now dead’.167
By this juncture, acts of sectarian violence had become a common feature of day-to-day life in Northern Ireland. Severe rioting broke out again in Derry, while in Belfast Orange Order parades down the Crumlin Road ignited widespread protests. For its part the nascent PIRA intensified its bombing campaign, while the British army’s heavy-handed security operations only further alienated Northern Catholics. On 27 June alone, a reported ninety-six people were injured in Northern Ireland.168 In a statement Lynch appealed for calm, but the violence went from bad to worse in the first week of July.169 The British army began a security crackdown in West Belfast and imposed a curfew lasting thirty-four hours. It was within this sense of despair and confusion that the Fianna Fáil government found itself trying to operate.
On 2 July, the charges of the attempted importation of arms were dropped against Blaney. District Justice Dónal Kearney determined that there was ‘not enough evidence linking the former minister to the specific charge of conspiring to import weapons between 1 March and 24 April’.170 Haughey, however, with his three co-accused, Luykx, Captain Kelly and John Kelly, were returned for trial in the Central Criminal Court. The first trial formally began on 22 September. The event was a thrilling spectacle. Only twenty-one journalists were permitted access to the court. While outside the courtroom the lobbies and adjacent rooms were packed full of assembled press. Blaney and Boland were also in attendance. The senior council for the state, Séamus McKenna, commenced proceedings by immediately focusing on Haughey’s telephone conversation with Peter Berry on 18 April, which concerned the request for security clearance for the cargo due to come into Dublin Airport. McKenna argued that this phone call was ‘of paramount importance’, the ‘final act in a conspiracy in which the accused jointly and illegally agreed to import weapons and ammunition, in contravention of the Firearms Acts’.171
The four defendants pleaded not guilty to the charges put forward by McKenna. Captain Kelly, John Kelly and Albert Luykx all admitted their role in the attempts to import arms, claiming that their actions were not illegal or covert, but had been sanctioned by the Irish government facilitated through Blaney, Haughey and Gibbons.172 Haughey, however, had a different strategy. His defence team sought to dispel the argument that he was aware of attempts to import weapons into Ireland. Haughey’s evidence directly contradicted four witnesses, including Peter Berry. During cross examination by the prosecution, Haughey accepted that he did try to arrange the importation of cargo through Dublin Airport, however, he argued that he only did so to facilitate IMI and because he was under the ‘clear impression that the shipment was required under the contingency plans agreed by the Government’. He maintained that at no time was he aware that the mentioned cargo included arms or ammunition.173
Captain Kelly later claimed that Haughey’s denial that he knew arms and ammunitions were involved was a blatant lie. ‘He did know,’ Captain Kelly exclaimed.174 Gibbons next entered the fray. His evidence at the trial was crucial to the prosecution case. Under the terms of the indictment, the prosecution had to prove that the attempts to import weapons were illegal because the minister for defence played no role in the affairs. Under oath Gibbons categorically denied that he ever agreed to sanction or even support attempts to import weapons.175 On 29 September the first arms trial dramatically and unexpectedly collapsed following Mr Justice Aindrias Ó Caoimh’s withdrawal from the case. Haughey was furious. As he left the courtroom he reportedly bemoaned: ‘Get off the bench Ó Caoimh. You’re a disgrace.’176
The second trial got underway on 6 October 1970. It was not until several days into the spectacle, 19 October, that Haughey was provided with his unwelcomed moment in the spotlight. Under oath, as is accordance with his arguments during the first trial, Haughey said that at all times he had operated in the best interests of the state and that in his capacity as chairman of the Northern Ireland sub-committee, always tried to ensure monies designated to help alleviate the distress of Northern Catholics was dispersed appropriately. He vigorously denied that he had any knowledge that monies were misappropriated to help arm the various Northern defence committees.177
On 23 October, Haughey was acquitted of alleged involvement in the attempt to import arms and ammunitions into Ireland. The jury took less than two hours to come to its decision. The verdict was apparently determined by Gibbons’s admission that Captain Kelly had told him of attempts to import arms and a ‘wider sense that the plot was an understandable response to the plight of Northern Catholics’.178 The jury found it difficult to accept that the arms importation did not have at least covert government sanction. In arriving at an acquittal verdict the jury concluded that the four accused men had ‘operated under properly delegated authority’. As a result the charges against the co-accused could not be sustained.179 Haughey felt vindicated. Nonetheless, in light of Justice Séamus Henchy’s argument that either Haughey or Gibbons had committed perjury during the proceedings, the trial cast a long shadow over the health of Irish democracy.
Most importantly, while Haughey may have personally felt vindicated, the fact that he was eventually acquitted, to quote Vincent Browne, ‘is no evidence that the jury believed that he knew nothing about the attempted arms importation or had no involvement in it’.180 As the foreman read out the ‘not guilty’ verdicts the court erupted. Chants could be heard throughout the High Court of ‘We want Charlie’ and jeers demanding ‘Lynch must go.’181 Blaney, Boland and Ó Móráin were carried shoulder-high out of the building, where they were met by the assembled media.182 During the celebrations Haughey then delivered a short statement, a sort of eulogy to his followers. ‘On behalf of myself and my fellow-patriots,’ he declared, ‘I would just like to say that I am grateful to you all, each and every one of you ... for your loyalty, devotion and faithfulness you have shown me during these recent difficult times.’183 Haughey next focused his attention on Lynch.
Later that evening speaking to some assembled reporters, following his acquittal, Haughey demanded Lynch’s
